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 Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance. Nassim Nicholas Taleb odds ignorance acceptance Janet Yellen at the FED is equivalent to having a biology schoolteacher who has never seen blood perform brain surgery. Nassim Nicholas Taleb biology brain blood I suppose that the main benefit of being rich (over just being independent) is to be able to despise rich people (a good concentration of whom you find in glitzy ski resorts) without any sour grapes. It is even sweeter when these farts don't know that you are richer than they are. Nassim Nicholas Taleb benefits independent people In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations Nassim Nicholas Taleb corporations country promise Debt is a mistake between lender and borrower, and both should suffer. Nassim Nicholas Taleb debt suffering mistake Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. Nassim Nicholas Taleb unread-books reading book Success is becoming in middle adulthood what you dreamed to be in late childhood. Nassim Nicholas Taleb childhood middle becoming Redundancy is ambiguous because it seems like a waste if nothing unusual happens. Except that something unusual happens-usually . Nassim Nicholas Taleb ambiguous unusual waste Character is proportionate to N, the number of consecutive failures without being discouraged, or equivalently, the number of successive rejections without being intimidated. Nassim Nicholas Taleb rejection numbers character Restaurants get you in with food to sell you liquor; religions get you in with belief to sell you rules. Nassim Nicholas Taleb restaurants liquor belief The government-sponsored institution Fannie Mae, when I look at its risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry: their large staff of scientists deemed these events "unlikely." Nassim Nicholas Taleb risk government worry Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur Nassim Nicholas Taleb heroism youth age true humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others; the rest is either shyness or good marketing Nassim Nicholas Taleb surprise marketing humility If you don't feel that you haven't read enough, you haven't read enough. Nassim Nicholas Taleb enough havens feels It does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear. Nassim Nicholas Taleb succeed matter doe Mental clarity is the child of courage, not the other way around. Nassim Nicholas Taleb clarity children way The best test of whether someone is extremely stupid (or extremely wise) is whether financial and political news makes sense to him. Nassim Nicholas Taleb political stupid wise My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal Nassim Nicholas Taleb growing may lying There are secrets to our world that only practice can reveal, and no opinion or analysis will ever capture in full. Nassim Nicholas Taleb our-world practice secret Further, in writing, I feel corrupt and unethical if I have to look up a subject in a library as part of the writing itself. This acts as a filter--it is the only filter. If the subject is not interesting enough for me to look it up independently, for my own curiosity or purposes, and I have not done so before, then I should not be writing about it at all, period. It does not mean that libraries (physical and virtual) are not acceptable; it means that they should not be the source of any idea. Nassim Nicholas Taleb writing mean ideas
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