What fools call "wasting time" is most often the best investment. Nassim Nicholas Taleb More Quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb More Quotes From Nassim Nicholas Taleb They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom. Nassim Nicholas Taleb envy wealth looks It is my great hope someday, to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known. Namely that our highest currency is respect. Nassim Nicholas Taleb someday respect decision Never ask anyone for their opinion, forecast, or recommendation. Just ask them what they have—or don’t have—in their portfolio. Nassim Nicholas Taleb recommendations portfolios opinion I'm a capitalist but one who is smallist and localist, and who favours businesses where owners are still in charge. Nassim Nicholas Taleb capitalist owners favour You want to be yourself, idiosyncratic; the collective (school, rules, jobs, technology) wants you generic to the point of castration. Nassim Nicholas Taleb being-yourself jobs school Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope, some day, to find something to say. Nassim Nicholas Taleb writing What organized dating sites fail to understand is that the people are far more interesting in what they don't say about themselves. Nassim Nicholas Taleb dating people interesting Decomposition, for most, starts when they leave the free, social, and uncorrupted college life for the solitary confinement of professions and nuclear families. Nassim Nicholas Taleb nuclear-families social college Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making. Nassim Nicholas Taleb policy-making relief anxiety In economic life and history more generally, just about everything of consequence comes from black swans; ordinary events have paltry effects in the long term. Nassim Nicholas Taleb swans black long Rank beliefs not according to their plausibility but by the harm they may cause. Nassim Nicholas Taleb causes belief may Scientists don't know what they are talking about when they talk about religion. Religion has nothing to do with belief, and I don't believe it has any negative impact on people's lives outside of intolerance. Why do I go to church? It's like asking, why did you marry that woman? You make up reasons, but it's probably just smell. I love the smell of candles. It's an aesthetic thing. Nassim Nicholas Taleb impact talking believe A competitive athlete is painful to look at; trying hard to become an animal rather than a man, he will never be as fast as a cheetah or as strong as an ox. Nassim Nicholas Taleb strong athlete men 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. Nassim Nicholas Taleb lunch writing two Probability and expectation are not the same. Its probability and probability times the pay off. Nassim Nicholas Taleb probability expectations pay Those who were unlucky in life in spite of their skills would eventually rise. The lucky fool might have benefited from some luck in life; over the longer run he would slowly converge to the state of a less-lucky idiot. Each one would revert to his long-term properties. Nassim Nicholas Taleb skills running long Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries, let alone revising their categories. Nassim Nicholas Taleb categories boundaries people Much of aging comes from a misunderstanding of the effect of comfort. Nassim Nicholas Taleb effects aging comfort History doesn't crawl; it leaps. Nassim Nicholas Taleb leap investing 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. Nassim Nicholas Taleb gym-rats men fall