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

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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" Capitalism has forced everyone to overoptimize in order to compete. "

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" We are victims of the post-Enlightenment view that the world functions like a sophisticated machine, to be understood like a textbook engineering problem and run by wonks. In other words, like a home appliance, not like the human body. "

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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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" What we need to do is break the financial community's grip on society. "

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

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" I hated school because I liked to daydream and the system tried to stop me from that. "

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" The people I go after are the false experts, those who do not accept the limits of their knowledge. "

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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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" The key to wealth is that it doesn't matter. Once you've had it, you don't think anything of it; you can wear cheap watches. "

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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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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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" 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. "

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

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" I don't read the papers; I stopped reading the papers. I read the papers only during periods of crisis, and I think papers are too long on a regular day and too short days when we have a crisis. "

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" You know, children philosophize more than adults - and they are critical of adults. "

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" The mortgage crisis is a clear instance of consumers who needed protection. There was predatory lending to people who didn't know what they were doing. "

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" 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. "

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

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" The grandchildren should not bear the debts of the grandparents. "

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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. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

" 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. "

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" 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. "

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

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