Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Things always become obvious after the fact”

“I don't go to the doctor except when I'm very ill, and when I go to India, I drink a drop of local water.”

“Writing is sacred, other activities are profane, and I don't want them to corrupt my writing.”

“We should ban banks from risk-taking because society is going to pay the price.”

“In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations”

“Corporations take the humanity out of trade - they take the happiness out and replace it with something that is ugly.”

“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.”