Quotessence
Home / Authors / Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsPeopleRiskKnowsThinkingHumansDoeNeedsErrorsShouldWantIdeasBlack SwanInformationModernityEventsLooksTryingUseAsks

Famous Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

“Life is sacrifice and risk taking, and nothing that doesn't entail some moderate amount of the former, under the constraint of satisfying the latter, is close to what we can call life. If you do not undertake a risk of real harm, reparable or even potentially irreparable, from an adventure, it is not an adventure.”

LifeRiskSacrificeAdventureHarmRisk Taking
Book:Skin in the Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
Create image

“The symposium was a closed-doors, synod-style assembly of people who would never have mixed otherwise. My first surprise was to discover that the military people there thought, behaved, and acted like philosophers—far more so than the philosophers we will see splitting hairs in their weekly colloquium in Part Three. They thought out of the box, like traders, except much better and without fear of introspection. An assistant secretary of defence was among us, but had I not known his profession I would have thought he was a practitioner of skeptical empiricism. Even an engineering investigator who had examined the cause of a space shuttle explosion was thoughtful and open-minded. I came out of the meeting realising that only military people deal with randomness with genuine, introspective intellectual honesty—unlike academics and corporate executives using other people's money. This does not show in war movies, where they are usually portrayed as war-hungry autocrats. The people in front of me were not the people who initiate wars. Indeed, for many, the successful defence policy is the one that manages to eliminate potential dangers without war, such as the strategy of bankrupting the Russians through the escalation in defence spending. When I expressed my amazement to Laurence, another finance person who was sitting next to me, he told me that the military collected more genuine intellects and risk thinkers than most if not all other professions. Defence people wanted to understand the epistemology of risk.”

RiskMilitaryArmyUncertaintyDefenceRisk Management
Book:The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Create image

“I came to discuss Black Swans, and I intended to tell them that the only thing I know is that we know precious little about them, but that it was their property to sneak up on us, and that attempts at Platonifying them led to additional misunderstandings. Military people can understand such things, and the idea became recently prevalent in military circles with the expression unknown unknown (as opposed to the known unknown).”

RiskMilitaryUncertaintyBlack SwanUnknown Unknowns
Book:The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Create image

“Philosophers talk about truth and falsehood. People in life talk about payoff, exposure, and consequences (risks and rewards), hence fragility and antifragility. And sometimes philosophers and thinkers and those who study conflate Truth with risks and rewards.”

PeopleSometimesStudyRiskConsequenceRewardsPhilosopherThinkerFalsehoodExposureFragilityPayoffTruth And FalsehoodRisk And Reward
Book:Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile
Create image

“Many people keep deploring the low level of formal education in the United states (as defined by, say, math grades). Yet these fail to realize that the new comes from here and gets imitated elsewhere. And it is not thanks to universities, which obviously claim a lot more credit than their accomplishments warrant. Like Britain in the Industrial Revolution, America's asset is, simply, risk taking and the use of optionality, this remarkable ability to engage in rational forms fo trial and error, with no comparative shame in failing again, starting again, and repeating failure.”

PeopleStatesUseAmericaFormRealizingAbilityLevelsUnitedUnited StatesFailingRiskRevolutionLowsClaimsShameErrorsUniversityStartingCreditMathTrialsRationalThanksDefinedAccomplishmentBritainGradesRemarkableAssetsElsewhereFormalRisk-takingWarrantsIndustrial RevolutionTrial And ErrorFormal EducationLow Level
Book:Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
Create image

“I've debated many economists who claim to specialize in risk and probability: when one takes them slightly outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability, they fall apart, with the disconsolate face of a gym rat in front of a gangster hit man.”

MenFacesFallFocusRiskFrontsDisciplineClaimsGymRatsProbabilityEconomistFalling ApartGangstersGym Rats
Book:Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
Create image

“In politics we face the choice between warmongering, nation-state loving, big-business agents on one hand; and risk-blind, top-down, epistemic arrogant big servants of large employers on the other. But we have a choice.”

StatesHandsBigsFacesChoicesNationsRiskBlindAgentsServantArrogantEmployersBig BusinessTop DownAnti Political
Book:The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
Create image

“Muscles without strength, friendship without trust, opinion without risk, change without aesthetics, age without values, food without nourishment, power without fairness, facts without rigor, degrees without erudition, militarism without fortitude, progress without civilization, complication without depth, fluency without content; these are the sins to remember.”

FactsAgeRememberValuesSinOpinionProgressRiskCivilizationDegreesDepthMusclesFairnessFortitudeAestheticsNourishmentComplicationMilitarismRigorEruditionFluencyWithout Trust
Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Create image