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The person you are most afraid to contradict is yourself.

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
Contradict
Afraid
Persons
Person

More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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Is the economy something organic or is it something engineered? I think it's closer to the organic. You harm it by artificially suppressing volatility in it.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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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
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We know from chaos theory that even if you had a perfect model of the world, you'd need infinite precision in order to predict future events. With sociopolitical or economic phenomena, we don't have anything like that.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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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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Decomposition, for most, starts when they leave the free, social, and uncorrupted college life for the solitary confinement of professions and nuclear families.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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What we need to do is break the financial community's grip on society.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Realism is punishing. Probabilistic skepticism is worse.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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If you don't feel that you haven't read enough, you haven't read enough.
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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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
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The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today's employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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People focus on role models it is more effective to find antimodels - people you don't want to resemble when you grow up
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Things always become obvious after the fact
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Anything that provides you with very, very stable income, very stable conditions, maybe generally stable, that often, it masks real risks, risks of blow-ups.
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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Every social association that is not face-to-face is injurious to your health.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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What fools call wasting time is most often the best investment.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Don't disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don't understand their logic. Don't pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific 'evidence'.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb