The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today's employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss. Nassim Nicholas Taleb More Quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb More Quotes From Nassim Nicholas Taleb An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion. Nassim Nicholas Taleb scaredideasinteresting If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just don’t do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason. Nassim Nicholas Taleb doctorserrorsmean The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds Nassim Nicholas Taleb problembirdbook Don't cross a river if it is four feet deep on average. Nassim Nicholas Taleb feetriversaverage Learn to fail with pride - and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error - by mastering the error part. Nassim Nicholas Taleb failureerrorspride Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words 'impossible', 'never', 'too difficult' too often, drop him or her from your social network. Nassim Nicholas Taleb useimpossiblemotivational Someone who says "I am busy" is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you. Nassim Nicholas Taleb incompetencebusytrying The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free Nassim Nicholas Taleb slaverydifferencestechnology The central idea in The Black Swan is that: rare events cannot be estimated from empirical observation since they are rare. Nassim Nicholas Taleb swansrare-eventsideas Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost. Nassim Nicholas Taleb heroicbehaviorhero The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent. Nassim Nicholas Taleb intelligenthalfmen They think that intelligence is about noticing things are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns) Nassim Nicholas Taleb patternsworldthinking To succeed in life requires a total inability to do anything that makes you uncomfortable when you look at yourself in the mirror. Nassim Nicholas Taleb inabilitymirrorslooks Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility; it results from some ecological or naturalistic wisdom, and is not always bad - at an existential level, it is my body rebelling against its entrapment. It is my soul fighting the Procrustean bed of modernity. Nassim Nicholas Taleb procrastinationfightingexercise If there is something in nature you don't understand, odds are it makes sense in a deeper way that is beyond your understanding. So there is a logic to natural things that is much superior to our own. Just as there is a dichotomy in law: 'innocent until proven guilty' as opposed to 'guilty until proven innocent', let me express my rule as follows: what Mother Nature does is rigorous until proven otherwise; what humans and science do is flawed until proven otherwise. Nassim Nicholas Taleb oddslawmother Go to parties. You can't even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues. Nassim Nicholas Taleb serendipitypartysuffering You will get the most attention from those who hate you. No friend, no admirer and no partner will flatter you with as much curiosity. Nassim Nicholas Taleb no-friendscuriosityhate Love without sacrifice is like theft Nassim Nicholas Taleb marriage-advicetrue-lovesacrifice We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended. It is an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order. [...] We take what we know a little too seriously. Nassim Nicholas Taleb ornamentsorderknowledge 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. Nassim Nicholas Taleb ifs-andnarrativedictatorship
