Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Most info-Web-media-newspaper types have a hard time swallowing the idea that knowledge is reached (mostly) by removing junk from peoples heads

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Only he who is free with his time is free with his opinion.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Probability and expectation are not the same. Its probability and probability times the pay-off.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market low you to put there.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Reality is far more vicious than Russian roulette. First, it delivers the fatal bullet rather infrequently, like a revolver that would have hundreds, even thousands of chambers instead of six. After a few dozen tries, one forgets about the existence of a bullet, under a numbing false sense of security. Second, unlike a well-defined precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality. One is capable of unwittingly playing Russian roulette - and calling it by some alternative “low risk” game.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Someone with a low degree of epistemic arrogance is not too visible, like a shy person at a cocktail party. We are not predisposed to respect humble people, those who try to suspend judgement. Now contemplate epistemic humility. Think of someone heavily introspective, tortured by the awareness of his own ignorance. He lacks the courage of the idiot, yet has the rare guts to say "I don't know." He does not mind looking like a fool or, worse, an ignoramus. Furthermore, he hesitates, he will not commit, and he agonizes over the consequences of being wrong. Furthermore, he introspects, introspects, and introspects until he reaches physical and nervous exhaustion. This does not necessarily mean he lacks confidence, only that he holds his own knowledge to be suspect. I will call such a person an epistemocrat; the province where the laws are structured with this kind of human fallibility in mind I will can an epistemocracy.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't finish college. Too much emphasis is placed on formal education - I told my children not to worry about their grades but to enjoy learning.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Suckers think that you cure greed with money, addiction with substances, expert problems with experts, banking with bankers, economics with economists, and debt crises with debt spending

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb