Quote

Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Small
Costly
Better
Imperfect
Human
Aesthetic
Humans
Consequences
Matter
Foolish
Consequence
Matters
Sceptical
Large
Scepticism

More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Image
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
Image
Alan Greenspan is unskilled you don't take the unskilled seriously.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
Simplicity is not so simple to attain.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
It does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
We should probably stop trading derivatives, anything more complex than regular options ... I am an options trader, and I don't understand options. How do you want a regulator to understand them?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
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
Image
Much of aging comes from a misunderstanding of the effect of comfort.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
I'm in favour of religion as a tamer of arrogance. For a Greek Orthodox, the idea of God as creator outside the human is not God in God's terms. My God isn't the God of George Bush.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
You don't become completely free by just avoiding being a slave you also need to avoid becoming a master.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
Luck is the grand equalizer.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
Don't cross a river if it is four feet deep on average.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
Just as being nice to the arrogant is no better than being arrogant toward the nice, being accommodating toward anyone committing a nefarious action condones it.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
Only in recent history has working hard signaled pride rather than shame for lack of talent, finesse and, mostly, sprezzatura .
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
It's harder to say 'no' when you really mean it.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
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
Image
If my detractors knew me better they would hate me even more.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
A competitive athlete is painful to look at trying hard to become an animal rather than a man, he will never be as fast as a cheetah or as strong as an ox.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
We favor the visible, the embedded, the personal, the narrated, and the tangible we scorn the abstract.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
It is my great hope someday, to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known. Namely that our highest currency is respect.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb