782 Quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Courage is the only virtue you cannot fake.

The classical man's worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man's worst fear is just death

...my classical values make me advocate the triplet of erudition, elegance, and courage; against modernity's phoniness, nerdiness, and philistinism...many philistines reduce my ideas to an opposition of technology when in fact I am opposing the naive blindness to it's side affects - the fragility criterion. I'd rather be unconditional about ethical and conditional about technology than the the reverse.

I attended a symposium, an event named after a fifth century (B.C.) Athenian drinking party in which nonnerds talked about love; alas, there was no drinking, and mercifully, nobody talked about love.

A central argument is never a summary. It is more like a generator.

But the worst touristification is the life we moderns have to lead in captivity, during our leisure hours: Friday night opera, scheduled parties, scheduled laughs. Again, golden jail. This "goal-driven" attitude hurts deeply inside my existential self.

Life is about execution rather than purpose.

Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.

Almost anything around us of significance is hard to grasp linguistically.