782 Quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Success is leading an honorable life. Honor implies that there are some actions you would categorically never do, regardless of the material rewards. It also means that there are things you would do unconditionally, regardless of the consequences.

It takes a huge investment in introspection to learn that the thirty or more hours spent “studying” the news last month neither had any predictive ability during your activities of that month nor did it impact your current knowledge of the world.

Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears

Life is sacrifice and risk taking, and nothing that doesn't entail some moderate amount of the former, under the constraint of satisfying the latter, is close to what we can call life. If you do not undertake a risk of real harm, reparable or even potentially irreparable, from an adventure, it is not an adventure.

The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.

When you beat up someone physically, you get excercise and stress relief; when you assault him verbally on the Internet, you just harm yourself.

Every social association that is not face-to-face is injurious to your health

One learns new words without making a nerd-effort, but rather another type of effort: to communicate, mostly by being forced to read the mind of the other person - suspending ones fear of making mistakes.

(J)ust as we tend to underestimate the role of luck in life in general, we tend to overestimate it in games of chance.