Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

Demands for solidarity can quickly turn into demands for groupthink, making it difficult to express nuance.

A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows the public opinion.

Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone.

Ignorance makes most men go into a political party, and shame keeps them from getting out of it.

A mob is not, as is so often said, mindless. A mob is single-minded.

The multitude is always in the wrong.

It's time to wake up to the reality that ignoring the genuine concerns of the 'fringe,' until it becomes the majority, is patently ridiculous. That the scapegoating of alternative opinions doesn't work.

Most racist people are like sheep. They are people without backbones.

The collective comes before the individual.

There is a noticeable difference from a crowd surging against you and a crowd surging with you.

I don't think that I'm a lone voice. I'm not even interested in being a lone voice.

It makes a lot of people cringe, the idea of being a team player.

Educate yourself, because this society is geared to have us hate each other. The longer we hate each other, the more we can't come together as humanity and look at the knuckleheads screwing it up for everybody.

Unity and self-sacrifice, of themselves, even when fostered by the most noble means, produce a facility for hating. Even when men league themselves mightily together to promote tolerance and peace on earth, they are likely to be violently intolerant toward those not of a like mind.

Conformity is the ape of harmony.

Knowledge leads to unity, but ignorance to diversity.

It's easier to be ignorant and say I don't know about the problem. But once you know, once you've seen it in their eyes, then you have a responsibility to do something. There is strength in numbers, and if we all work together as a team, we can be unstoppable.

Everything was becoming allegorical, understood by the group mind, and especially this: "You're either on the bus...or off the bus.

We need to do more than just what is right. We need to join together and right what is wrong.

And if we want to achieve our goal, then let us empower ourselves with the weapon of knowledge and let us shield ourselves with unity and togetherness.

In joined hands there is still some token of hope, in the clenched fist none.

There is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone.

On social media there's this thing where on many occasions, there's a single proscribed way of acting. Like if somebody dies, everyone has to say "R.I.P.! R.I.P.!" Basically they're saying, "Don't hurt me, I'm a good person."

Fools are very often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together.

It is in the nature of a group and its power to turn against independence, the property of individual strength.