782 Quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Religion isn’t so much about telling man that there is one God as about preventing man from thinking that he is God.

The best way to verify that you are alive is by checking if you like variations. Remember that food would not have a taste if it weren’t for hunger; results are meaningless without effort, joy without sadness, convictions without uncertainty, and an ethical life isn’t so when stripped of personal risks.

Humans will believe anything you say provided you do not exhibit the smallest shadow of diffidence; like animals, they can detect the smallest crack in your confidence before you express it. The trick is to be as smooth as possible in personal manners. It is much easier to signal self-confidence if you are exceedingly polite and friendly; you can control people without having to offend their sensitivity.

So the modern world may be increasing in technological knowledge, but, paradoxically, it is making things a lot more unpredictable.

This, perhaps is true self-confidence: the ability to look at the world without the need to find signs that stroke one’s ego.

In their intense meditation the hidden sound of things approaching reaches them and they listen reverently while in the street outside the people hear nothing at all.

Let us return to the idea that universities generate wealth and the growth of useful knowledge in society. There is a causal illusion here; time to bust it.

What we need to do is break the financial community’s grip on society.

I don’t read the papers; I stopped reading the papers. I read the papers only during periods of crisis, and I think papers are too long on a regular day and too short days when we have a crisis.