A biography for Nassim Nicholas Talebhasn’t been written yet.
“The track record of economists in predicting events is monstrously bad. It is beyond simplification; it is like medieval medicine.”
“People employed in financial institutions are rarely interesting and even more rarely likable.”
“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.”
“Alan Greenspan is unskilled; you don't take the unskilled seriously.”
“I'm a private intellectual, not a public one.”
“Being an economist is the least ethical profession, closer to charlatanism than any science.”
“You know, children philosophize more than adults - and they are critical of adults.”
“You cannot do anything with knowledge unless you know where it stops, and the costs of using it.”
“Inequalities of wealth lead to a dispersion in wealth for all.”
“Nature builds things that are antifragile. In the case of evolution, nature uses disorder to grow stronger. Occasional starvation or going to the gym also makes you stronger, because you subject your body to stressors and gain from them.”
“What I learned on my own I still remember”
“I have never had personal debt and never will.”
“What we need to do is break the financial community's grip on society.”
“Poverty is clearly one source of emotional suffering, but there are others, like loneliness.”
“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.”
“The world we live in is vastly different from the world we think we live in.”
“The people I go after are the false experts, those who do not accept the limits of their knowledge.”
“Debt is a mistake between lender and borrower, and both should suffer.”
“Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone”
“The mortgage crisis is a clear instance of consumers who needed protection. There was predatory lending to people who didn't know what they were doing.”