“Surfing is such an amazing concept. You're taking on Nature with a little stick and saying, 'I'm gonna ride you!' And a lot of times Nature says, 'No you're not!' and crashes you to the bottom.” LittlesConceptsSticksBottomCrashSurfingSurfer Author:Jolene Blalock
“You have family-owned businesses that have been around for 500 years. You cannot name a corporation that survives intact for even a few decades.” YearsHas BeensNamesDecadesCorporations Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“When you ask people, 'What's the opposite of fragile?,' they tend to say robust, resilient, adaptable, solid, strong. That's not it. The opposite of fragile is something that gains from disorder.” PeopleAsksStrongGainsOppositesDisorderFragileResilientRobustAdaptable Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that. The Titanic saved lives because we're building bigger and bigger ships. So these people died, but we have effectively improved the safety of the system, and nothing failed in vain.” PeopleNextBuildingFailureIndustryBiggerDiedSafetySavedShipsVainPlanesCrashProbabilityAirlineSave A LifePlane CrashesAirline Industry Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“Globalization has created this interlocking fragility. At no time in the history of the universe has the cancellation of a Christmas order in New York meant layoffs in China.” OrderUniverseNew YorkChinaGlobalizationFragilityCancellationLayoff Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“I don't read the papers; I stopped reading the papers. I read the papers only during periods of crisis, and I think papers are too long on a regular day and too short days when we have a crisis.” ThinkingLongReadingPeriodsPaperCrisisPapersToo ShortRegular Days Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“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.” HumansIdeasTermCreatorGreekArroganceOrthodoxFavourGreek Orthodox Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“If I ask you to write down the last 4 digits of your social security number, and then take you out to lunch and ask you how many dentists there are in Manhattan, there's going to be a high correlation between those two numbers. What happens is that the number psychologically makes you feel confident.” IfsFeelsWritingTwoHappensLastsAsksSocialNumbersSecurityLunchSocial SecurityManhattanDentistCorrelation Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“People have the problem of denial. This is one of the things I learned in Lebanon. Everybody who left Beirut when the war started, including my parents, said, 'Oh, its temporary.' It lasted 17 years! People tend to underestimate the gravity of these situations. That's how they work.” PeopleYearsSaidWarProblemLeftParentSituationIncludingDenialTemporaryGravityUnderestimateLebanonBeirut Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“The Internet allows the small guy a global marketplace. But technology is harmful in the sense that we get too much information from it. Because of the web we get 10 times the amount of noise we ever got, which makes harmful fallacies far more likely.” GuyTechnologyToo MuchInformationAmountInternetNoiseMarketplaceFallacyToo Much Information Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb
