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" Most people are sceptical about the wrong things and gullible about the wrong things. "

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

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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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" 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. "

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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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" Bailing out every bank that fails makes the system riskier, not safer. "

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

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

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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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" We have this culture of financialization. People think they need to make money with their savings rather with their own business. So you end up with dentists who are more traders than dentists. A dentist should drill teeth and use whatever he does in the stock market for entertainment. "

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