1. “Difficulty is what wakes up the genius” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
2. “It’s harder to say no when you really mean it.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
3. “Abundance is harder for us to handle than scarcity.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
4. “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
5. “Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
6. “Those who were unlucky in life in spite of their skills would eventually rise. The lucky fool might have benefited from some luck in life; over the longer run he would slowly converge to the state of a less-lucky idiot. Each one would revert to his long-term properties.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
7. “A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
8. “You may never know what type of person someone is unless they are given opportunities to violate moral or ethical codes.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
9. “If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
10. “When you write, you don’t have the social constraints of having people in front of you, so you talk about abstract matters.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
11. “The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
12. “If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
13. “Intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
14. “Never think that lack of variability is stability. Don’t confuse lack of volatility with stability, ever.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
15. “A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of thirty.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
16. “If you want to get an idea of a friend’s temperament, ethics, and personal elegance, you need to look at him under the tests of severe circumstances, not under the regular rosy glow of daily life.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
17. “A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in light of the information available until that point.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
18. “Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
19. “If you do something you don’t like, it sort of corrupts your personality.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
20. “Success brings an asymmetry: you now have a lot more to lose than to gain. You are hence fragile.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
21. “The only thing a business school professor can teach you is how to become a business school professor.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
22. “They think that intelligence is about noticing things are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns).” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
23. “Bitcoin is the beginning of something great: a currency without a government, something necessary and imperative.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
24. “I’ve never met a rich nitpicker.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
25. “It is my great hope someday, to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known. Namely that our highest currency is respect.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
26. “It takes extraordinary wisdom and self-control to accept that many things have a logic we do not understand that is smarter than our own.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
27. “Success is becoming in middle adulthood what you dreamed to be in late childhood.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
28. “This is the central illusion in life: that randomness is a risk, that it is a bad thing…” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
29. “Prediction, not narration, is the real test of our understanding of the world.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
30. “You do not want to win an argument. You want to win.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
31. “Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
32. “Ideas come and go, stories stay.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
33. “Never ask anyone for their opinion, forecast, or recommendation. Just ask them what they have – or don’t have – in their portfolio.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
34. “The simpler, the better. Complications lead to multiplicative chains of unanticipated effects.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
35. “Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
36. “You will never fully convince someone that he is wrong; only reality can.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
37. “Make sure that you are in a situation where the constant mistakes are small and can be used for something.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
38. “Curiosity is antifragile, like an addiction, and is magnified by attempts to satisfy it – books have a secret mission and ability to multiply, as everyone who has wall-to-wall bookshelves knows well.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
39. “Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
40. “What I learned on my own I still remember.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
41. “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
42. “If you don’t feel that you haven’t read enough, you haven’t read enough.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
43. “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
44. “An idea stats to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
45. “Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
46. “Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
47. “Many people drive two miles to the gym in order to walk two miles on a treadmill. Just walk.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
48. “When you walk the walk, whether successful or not, you feel more indifferent and robust to people’s opinion, freer, more real.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
49. “Start by being nice to every person you meet. But if someone tries to exercise power over you, exercise power over him.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
50. “Dress your best on your execution day. Be extremely courteous to your assistant when you lose money. Try not to blame others for your fate, even if they deserve blame. Never exhibit any self-pity. Do not complain.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
51. “Never take any financial advice from someone who has to work for a living.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
52. “People are much less interested in what you are trying to show them than what you are trying to hide.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
53. “History doesn’t crawl; it leaps.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
54. “Freedom is always associated with risk taking, whether it leads to it or comes from it.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
55. “If you do not take risks for your opinion, you are nothing.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
56. “Suckers think that you cure greed with money, addiction with substances, expert problems with experts, banking with bankers, economics with economists, and debt crises with debt spending” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
57. “How much you truly “believe” in something can be manifested only through what you are willing to risk for it.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
58. “Simplicity is not so simple to attain.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
59. “You know you have influence when people start noticing your absence more than the presence of others.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
60. “Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
61. “Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
62. “Entrepreneurs are heroes in our society. They fail for the rest of us.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
63. “Writing is the art of repeating oneself without anyone noticing.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
64. “To bankrupt a fool, give him information.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
65. “They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status – but rarely for your wisdom.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
66. “Most people are sceptical about the wrong things and gullible about the wrong things.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
67. “We are quick to forget that just being alive is an extraordinary piece of good luck, a remote event, a chance occurrence of monstrous proportions.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
68. “To understand how something works, figure out how to break it.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
69. “Courage is the only virtue you cannot fake.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
70. “Comfort makes you weaker. We need some variability, some stressors. Not too much, but just enough.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
71. “When you have trial and error you outperform someone who knows because convexity matters a lot more than knowledge.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
72. “If you need others to know that you are doing well, you’re not doing well.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
73. “When we want to do something while unconsciously certain to fail, we seek advice so we can blame someone else for the failure.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
74. “By definition, what works cannot be irrational; about every single person I know who has chronically failed in business shares that mental block, the failure to realize that if something stupid works (and makes money), it cannot be stupid.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
75. “Weak men act to satisfy their needs, stronger men their duties.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
76. “Things always become obvious after the fact.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
77. “No, businessmen as risk takers are not subjected to the judgment of other businessmen, only to that of their personal accountant.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
78. “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
79. “Some people are only funny when they try to be serious.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
80. “The person you are most afraid to contradict is yourself.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
81. “People focus on role models; it is more effective to find anti-models – people you don’t want to resemble when you grow up.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
82. “People who are bred, selected, and compensated to find complicated solutions do not have an incentive to implement simplified ones.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
83. “Sometimes people ask you a question with their eyes begging you to not tell them the truth.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
84. “Being an entrepreneur is an existential, not just a financial thing.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
85. “Wisdom in the young is as unattractive as frivolity in the elderly.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
86. “Just as no monkey is as good-looking as the ugliest of humans, no academic is worthier than the worst of the creators.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
87. “If it costs you your peace, it’s too expensive.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
88. “Believe me, it is tough to deal with the social consequences of the appearance of continuous failure. We are social animals; hell is other people.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
89. “When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
90. “The best way to learn a language may be an episode of jail in a foreign country.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
91. “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
92. “Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
93. “Not everything that happens happens for a reason, but everything that survives survives for a reason.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
94. “Never take any advice from someone you didn’t ask for advice.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
95. “Much of modern life is preventable chronic stress injury.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
96. “It does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
97. “The fastest way to become rich is to socialize with the poor; the fastest way to become poor is to socialize with the rich.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
98. “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
99. “He tends to mistake the unknown for the nonexistent.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
100. “If you’re going to fail, you’d rather fail early than fail late in general.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
101. “Those who talk should do and only those who do should talk.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
102. “A man is honorable in proportion to the personal risks he takes for his opinion.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
103. “We tend to use knowledge as therapy.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
104. “Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
105. “Love without sacrifice is like theft.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
106. “The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
107. “Learn to fail with pride – and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error – by mastering the error part.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
108. “Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
109. “A good book gets better at the second reading. A great book at the third. Any book not worth rereading isn’t worth reading.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
110. “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
111. “It is a sign of weakness to avoid showing signs of weakness.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
112. “Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
113. “The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
114. “Don’t cross a river if it is four feet deep on average.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
115. “Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible’, ‘never’, ‘too difficult’ too often, drop him or her from your social network.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
116. “Never ask a man if he is from Sparta: If he were, he would have let you know such an important fact – and if he were not, you could hurt his feelings.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
117. “Probability is not about the odds, but about the belief in the existence of an alternative outcome, cause, or motive.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
118. “If the past, by bringing surprises, did not resemble the past previous to it (what I call the past’s past), then why should our future resemble our current past?” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
119. “Avoid taking advice from someone who gives advice for a living, unless there is a penalty for their advice.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
120. “You need a story to displace a story.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
121. “The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb