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He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once. And someone who has made plenty of errors-though never the same error more than once-is more reliable than someone who has never made any.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: September 11
Author
Economist
Essayist
Mathematician
Philosopher
Statistician
University Teacher
Writer
Nassim Nicholas Najib Taleb
Nassim Taleb
Error
Plenty
Errors
Though
Less
Someone
Made
Sinned
Never
Reliable

More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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There is a certain category of fool-the overeducated, the academic, the journalist, the newspaper reader, the mechanistic scientist, the pseudo-empiricist, those endowed with what I call epistemic arrogance, this wonderful ability to discount what they did not see, the unobserved.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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There is no effective difference between guessing a variable that is not random, but for which information is partial or deficient, and a random one. In this sense, guessing (what I don't know, but what someone else may know) and predicting (what has not taken place yet) are the same thing.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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I'm a capitalist but one who is smallist and localist, and who favours businesses where owners are still in charge.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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I've debated many economists who claim to specialize in risk and probability: when one takes them slightly outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability, they fall apart, with the disconsolate face of a gym rat in front of a gangster hit man.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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By setting oneself totally free of constraints, free of thoughts, free of this debilitating activity called work, free of efforts, elements hidden in the texture of reality start staring at you then mysteries that you never thought existed emerge in front of your eyes.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't finish college. Too much emphasis is placed on formal education - I told my children not to worry about their grades but to enjoy learning.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Writing is the art of repeating oneself without anyone noticing.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility it results from some ecological or naturalistic wisdom, and is not always bad - at an existential level, it is my body rebelling against its entrapment. It is my soul fighting the Procrustean bed of modernity.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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I no longer care about the financial system. I gave them my roadmap. OK? Thanks, bye. I've no idea what's going on. I'm disconnected. I'm totally disengaged.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Let me be more aggressive: we are largely better at doing than we are at thinking, thanks to antifragility. I’d rather be dumb and antifragile than extremely smart and fragile, any time.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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If my detractors knew me better they would hate me even more.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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A verbal threat is the most authentic certificate of impotence.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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I remind myself of Einstein's remark that common sense is nothing but a collection of misconceptions acquired by age 18.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Someone who says I am busy is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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true humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others the rest is either shyness or good marketing
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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My best definition of a nerd: someone who asks you to explain an aphorism
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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It does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same the antifragile gets better.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb