782 Quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The world we live in is vastly different from the world we think we live in.

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.

This is the central illusion in life: that randomness is a risk, that it is a bad thing ...

The people I go after are the false experts, those who do not accept the limits of their knowledge.

If you sat with a pencil and jotted down all the decisions you've taken in the past week, or, if you could, over your lifetime, you would realize that almost all of them have had asymmetric payoff, with one side carrying a larger consequence than the other. You decide principally based on fragility, not probability. Or to rephrase, You decide principally based on fragility, not so much on True/False.

Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.

Redundancy is ambiguous because it seems like a waste if nothing unusual happens. Except that something unusual happens-usually .

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.

Just as being nice to the arrogant is no better than being arrogant toward the nice, being accommodating toward anyone committing a nefarious action condones it.