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" Deficits are like putting dynamite in the hands of children. They can get out of control very quickly. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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" There are two types of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same. "

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" If I ask you to write down the last 4 digits of your social security number, and then take you out to lunch and ask you how many dentists there are in Manhattan, there's going to be a high correlation between those two numbers. What happens is that the number psychologically makes you feel confident. "

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" A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation. "

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" Fragility is the quality of things that are vulnerable to volatility. "

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" I drive a hybrid, moving into an electric car. I only drink tap water, never consume food that's travelled. "

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" For many people, commuting is the worst part of the day, and policies that can make commuting shorter and more convenient would be a straightforward way to reduce minor but widespread suffering. "

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" What we do today has nothing to do with capitalism or socialism. It is a crony type of system that transfers money to the coffers of bureaucrats. "

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" Governments that try to shoot for a surplus hardly ever reach it. "

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" Writing is sacred, other activities are profane, and I don't want them to corrupt my writing. "

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" Inequalities of wealth lead to a dispersion in wealth for all. "

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" We should ban banks from risk-taking because society is going to pay the price. "

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" A country's assets reside in the tinkerers, the hobbyists, and the risk-takers. "

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" I'm in favour of religion as a tamer of arrogance. For a Greek Orthodox, the idea of God as creator outside the human is not God in God's terms. My God isn't the God of George Bush. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" If you are an Arabic-speaking, Greek-Orthodox going to a French school it makes you deeply sceptical if you have to listen to three different accounts of the Crusades - one from the Muslim side, one from the Greek side and one from the Catholic side. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" I have never had personal debt and never will. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" 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

" 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

" I'm a private intellectual, not a public one. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" When you ask people, 'What's the opposite of fragile?,' they tend to say robust, resilient, adaptable, solid, strong. That's not it. The opposite of fragile is something that gains from disorder. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" Years ago, I noticed one thing about economics, and that is that economists didn't get anything right. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" The best philosophers were not academics, but had another job, so their philosophy was not corrupted by careerism. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" In the United States, large corporations control some members of Congress. All this does is delay the corporation's funeral at our expense. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" I don't go to the doctor except when I'm very ill, and when I go to India, I drink a drop of local water. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" People have the problem of denial. This is one of the things I learned in Lebanon. Everybody who left Beirut when the war started, including my parents, said, 'Oh, its temporary.' It lasted 17 years! People tend to underestimate the gravity of these situations. That's how they work. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" Democracies can't handle austerity measures very well. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" The American people will eventually get hurt by this accumulated deficit. That's the problem. We have too much deficit. We have to find a solution. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" Capitalism is about adventurers who get harmed by their mistakes, not people who harm others with their mistakes. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" Never think that lack of variability is stability. Don't confuse lack of volatility with stability, ever. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" Alan Greenspan is unskilled; you don't take the unskilled seriously. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

Nassim Nicholas Taleb