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

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

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" When you write, you don't have the social constraints of having people in front of you, so you talk about abstract matters. "

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" 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. "

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" People employed in financial institutions are rarely interesting and even more rarely likable. "

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

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" The next time you experience a blackout, take some solace by looking at the sky. You will not recognize it. "

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" I select a very small number of things to be sceptical about, such as markets, and on these I am hypersceptic. But I want to be fooled by randomness in art. I want the ceremonial of religion; we are made for it. "

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" 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. "

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" I am happy everywhere except in places where I see glitz and rich farts. I am happiest in Brooklyn, where the concentration of rich farts is minimal. "

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" I no longer care about the financial system. I gave them my roadmap. OK? Thanks, bye. I've no idea what's going on. I'm disconnected. I'm totally disengaged. "

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" Individuals should think about the worst-case scenarios and plan for them. The world will be crazier than you think it will be. Put money away, and then you can live with much more freedom. "

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

" Corporations take the humanity out of trade - they take the happiness out and replace it with something that is ugly. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" I've been telling anyone willing to listen that banks have a tendency to sit on time bombs while convincing themselves that they are conservative and nonvolatile. "

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

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

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" I lift heavy weights and sprint, but I am so bad at it that I develop severe injuries. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" When I trade, I don't have an agency problem; I have my neck on the line. When a bank or banker trades, it's not his neck on the line. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" You have family-owned businesses that have been around for 500 years. You cannot name a corporation that survives intact for even a few decades. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" Nature builds things that are antifragile. In the case of evolution, nature uses disorder to grow stronger. Occasional starvation or going to the gym also makes you stronger, because you subject your body to stressors and gain from them. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" 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. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" I don't know anyone on Wall Street who goes to work every day thinking of anything but how to increase their bonus. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" I'm a capitalist but one who is smallist and localist, and who favours businesses where owners are still in charge. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" It might be useful to be able to predict war. But tension does not necessarily lead to war, but often to peace and to denouement. "

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

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" The world we live in is vastly different from the world we think we live in. "

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" Nobody reads the disclosures that roll down your computer screen. You click 'I agree' but you don't know what you're agreeing to. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" The track record of economists in predicting events is monstrously bad. It is beyond simplification; it is like medieval medicine. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb