Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that. The Titanic saved lives because we’re building bigger and bigger ships. So these people died, but we have effectively improved the safety of the system, and nothing failed in vain. Nassim Nicholas Taleb Read Quote
Success is about honour, feeling morally calibrated, absence of shame, not what some newspaper defines from an external metric. Nassim Nicholas Taleb Read Quote
The best philosophers were not academics, but had another job, so their philosophy was not corrupted by careerism. Nassim Nicholas Taleb Read Quote
We know from chaos theory that even if you had a perfect model of the world, you’d need infinite precision in order to predict future events. With sociopolitical or economic phenomena, we don’t have anything like that. Nassim Nicholas Taleb Read Quote
Globalization has created this interlocking fragility. At no time in the history of the universe has the cancellation of a Christmas order in New York meant layoffs in China. Nassim Nicholas Taleb Read Quote
If you take risks and face your fate with dignity, there is nothing you can do that makes you small; if you don’t take risks, there is nothing you can do that makes you grand, nothing. Nassim Nicholas Taleb Read Quote
Never take advice from anyone in a tie. They’ll bankrupt you. Don’t ask a general for advice on war, and don’t ask a broker for advice on money. Nassim Nicholas Taleb Read Quote
There are two types of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same. Nassim Nicholas Taleb Read Quote
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 Read Quote
You are rich if and only if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept. Nassim Nicholas Taleb Read Quote
