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Umberto Eco is the owner of a large personal library of almost 30,000 books that he has not read. [To him] read books are far less valuable than unread ones.

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
Books
Eco
Almost
Owner
Less
Owners
Read
Library
Book
Valuable
Large
Ones
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More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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When you ask people, 'What's the opposite of fragile?,' they tend to say robust, resilient, adaptable, solid, strong. That's not it. The opposite of fragile is something that gains from disorder.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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What is nonmeasurable and nonpredictable will remain nonmeasurable and nonpredictable ... no matter how much hate mail I get.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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It might be useful to be able to predict war. But tension does not necessarily lead to war, but often to peace and to denouement.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Also, it's good to have more than one profession, in case your own profession goes out of style. A Wall Street trader who's also a belly dancer will do a lot better than a trader who winds up driving a taxi.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market alow you to put there.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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They are born, put in a box they go home to live in a box they study by ticking boxes they go to what is called work in a box, where they sit in their cubicle box they drive to the grocery store in a box to buy food in a box they talk about thinking outside the box and when they die they are put in a box.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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I lift heavy weights and sprint, but I am so bad at it that I develop severe injuries.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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I always remind myself that what one observes is at best a combination of variance and returns, not just returns.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Philosophers talk about truth and falsehood. People in life talk about payoff, exposure, and consequences (risks and rewards), hence fragility and antifragility. And sometimes philosophers and thinkers and those who study conflate Truth with risks and rewards.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Don't ask the barber whether you need a haircut, and don't ask an academic if what he does is relevant.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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If humans fight the last war, nature fights the next one.
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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Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Never think that lack of variability is stability. Don't confuse lack of volatility with stability, ever.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that. The Titanic saved lives because we're building bigger and bigger ships. So these people died, but we have effectively improved the safety of the system, and nothing failed in vain.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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You want to be yourself, idiosyncratic the collective (school, rules, jobs, technology) wants you generic to the point of castration.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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To bankrupt a fool, give him information.
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 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