Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

Most info-Web-media-newspaper types have a hard time swallowing the idea that knowledge is reached (mostly) by removing junk from peoples heads
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
It took us a while to discover that we do effectively think, but that we more readily narrate backward in order to give ourselves the illusion of understanding, and give a cover to our past actions.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist
Nassim Nicholas Taleb