NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB

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

Economics make homeopath and alternative healers look empirical and scientific.

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

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.

All of technology, really, is about maximizing free options.

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.

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

Poverty is clearly one source of emotional suffering, but there are others, like loneliness.

Being an economist is the least ethical profession, closer to charlatanism than any science.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Democracies can't handle austerity measures very well.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that. The Titanic saved lives because we're building bigger and bigger ships. So these people died, but we have effectively improved the safety of the system, and nothing failed in vain.

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.

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.

We humans lack imagination, to the point of not even knowing what tomorrow's important things will look like.