179 quotes
My idea of the modern Stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)
For the robust, an error is information.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making.
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007)
The person you are the most afraid to contradict is yourself.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
I wonder if those who advocate generosity for its rewards notice the inconsistency, or if what they call generosity is an attractive investment strategy.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
The sucker’s trap is when you focus on what you know and what others don’t know, rather than the reverse.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
While in theory randomness is an intrinsic property, in practice, randomness is incomplete information.
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007)
Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
There is no intermediate state between ice and water but there is one between life and death: employment.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
Preoccupation with efficacy is the main obstacle to a poetic, elegant, robust and heroic life.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
In science you need to understand the world; in business you need others to misunderstand it.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
Success is becoming in middle adulthood what you dreamed to be in late childhood.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
If your private life conflicts with your intellectual opinion, it cancels your intellectual ideas, not your private life.
Skin in the Game (2018)
Someone who says “I am busy” is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
Half of life—the interesting half of life—we don't even have a name for.
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)
People who are bred, selected, and compensated to find complicated solutions do not have an incentive to implement simplified ones.
Skin in the Game (2018)
Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility.
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)
A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of thirty.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)