Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

born 1960 Lebanon

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (born 1 January, 1960 in Amioun, Lebanon) is an essayist, epistemologist, researcher, and former practitioner of mathematical finance.

Lebanon
Academics
Essayists
Non-fiction authors
Philosophers

Also known as: Nassim N. Taleb, Nassim Taleb, Taleb, Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, NNT

Random Nassim Nicholas Taleb quote

179 quotes

Survival comes first, truth, understanding, and science later.

Skin in the Game (2018)

For the classics philosophical insight was the product of a life of leisure; for me a life of leisure is the product of philosophical insight.

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

If humans fight the last war, nature fights the next one.

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)

Much of modern life is preventable chronic stress injury.

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)

Decomposition, for most, starts when they leave the free, social, and uncorrupted college life for the solitary confinement of professions and nuclear families.

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

You exist if and only if you are free to do things without a visible objective, with no justification and, above all, outside the dictatorship of someone else’s narrative.

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

Information is antifragile; it feeds more on attempts to harm it than it does on efforts to promote it.

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)

Restaurants get you in with food to sell you liquor; religions get you in with belief to sell you rules.

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

The fragile wants tranquility, the antifragile grows from disorder, and the robust doesn't care too much.

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)

The antifragility of the higher level may require the fragility—and sacrifice—of the lower one.

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)

Avoid taking advice from someone who gives advice for a living, unless there is a penalty for their advice.

Skin in the Game (2018)

Using, as an excuse, others’ failure of common sense is in itself a failure of common sense.

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

You can tell how uninteresting a person is by asking him whom he finds interesting.

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

When some systems are stuck in a dangerous impasse, randomness and only randomness can unlock them and set them free.

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)

Bureaucracy is a construction by which a person is conveniently separated from the consequences of his or her actions.

Skin in the Game (2018)

Nobody wants to be perfectly transparent; not to others, certainly not to himself.

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

You are rich if and only if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept.

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

Rank beliefs not according to their plausibility but by the harm they may cause.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007)

The best way to learn a language may be an episode of jail in a foreign country.

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Nassim Nicholas Taleb (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.