782 Quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope, some day, to find something to say.

Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties that normal citizens require. Citizens should experience anxiety about their own businesses (which they control), not their investments (which they do not control).

There are secrets to our world that only practice can reveal, and no opinion or analysis will ever capture in full.

Someone bemoaned that there were so few women in economics. But there are also very few men in economics.

The payoff of a human venture is, in general, inversely proportional to what it is expected to be.

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.

To become a philosopher, start by walking very slowly.

They are born, put in a box; they go home to live in a box; they study by ticking boxes; they go to what is called "work" in a box, where they sit in their cubicle box; they drive to the grocery store in a box to buy food in a box; they talk about thinking "outside the box"; and when they die they are put in a box.

It is often the mistakes of others that benefit the rest of us and, sadly, not them ... For the antifragile, harm from errors should be less than the benefits.