A biography for Nassim Nicholas Talebhasn’t been written yet.
“What America does best is produce the ability to accept failure.”
“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.”
“Capitalism has forced everyone to overoptimize in order to compete.”
“Deficits are like putting dynamite in the hands of children. They can get out of control very quickly.”
“You are rich if and only if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept.”
“Fragility is the quality of things that are vulnerable to volatility.”
“The grandchildren should not bear the debts of the grandparents.”
“It took us a while to discover that we do effectively think, but that we more readily narrate backward in order to give ourselves the illusion of understanding, and give a cover to our past actions.”
“The key to wealth is that it doesn't matter. Once you've had it, you don't think anything of it; you can wear cheap watches.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Most people are sceptical about the wrong things and gullible about the wrong things.”
“Why do we keep focusing on the minutiae, not the possible significant large events, in spite of the obvious evidence of their huge influence?”
“Capitalism is about adventurers who get harmed by their mistakes, not people who harm others with their mistakes.”
“The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one.”
“We humans lack imagination, to the point of not even knowing what tomorrow's important things will look like.”
“Never take advice from anyone in a tie. They'll bankrupt you. Don't ask a general for advice on war, and don't ask a broker for advice on money.”
“There is a saying that bad traders divorce their spouse sooner than abandon their positions. Loyalty to ideas is not a good thing for traders, scientists - or anyone.”
“Paul Krugman is a danger to society!”
“A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.”