Taleb Aphorisms

Nassim Nicholas Taleb TABLE
LIFE, HATE, LOVE, ETC. 2 
SUCCESS, INSUCCESS, HAPPINESS, AND STOICISM 7 
AGING 9 
THE REPUBLIC OF LETTERS 10 
THE UNIVERSAL AND THE PARTICULAR 13 
FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS 14 
Poetic & Philosophical (RE)BECOMING FREE 15 
Aphorisms AESTHETICS 18 
ETHICS 19 
EPISTEMOLOGY 21 
Work in Progress
THE GENERALIZED SUCKER PROBLEM 22 
ROBUSTNESS AND FRAGILITY 24 

2010
THE LUDIC FALLACY AND ITS EXTENSIONS 25 
THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE 26 

POETIC & PHILOSOPHICAL APHORISMS
DEALING WITH THE FUTURE 27  Life, Hate, Love, etc.

BEING A PHILOSOPHER AND MANAGING TO REMAIN ONE
28 
POLITICS, ECONOMICS, AND OTHER VERY VULGAR

SUBJECTS 29 
1.
The opposite of success isn't failure, it is name dropping.
2.
You know you have influence when people start noticing your
absence more than the presence of others.
3.
Badmouthing is the only genuine expression of admiration.
4.
They will envy you for your success, for your wealth, for your
intelligence, for your looks, for your status --but rarely for your
wisdom
5/17/10 © Copyright 2009 by N. N. Taleb. This draft version cannot be disseminated or quoted. 2
5. 10.
Most of what they call humility is successfully disguised You will get the most attention from those who hate you. No
arrogance. friend, no admirer, and no partner will flatter you with equal
curiosity.
6.
11.
If you want people to read a book, tell them it is overrated.

True humility is when you can surprise yourself more than
others; the rest is either shyness or good marketing.
7.
12.
The mark of a mediocre mind is the subdued and passive
reaction in front of the truly exceptional.
Social media are antisocial, health foods are empirically
unhealthy, knowledge workers are ignorant, & social sciences aren't
8.
scientific.
Hatred is love with a typo somewhere in the computer code, 13.

correctable but very hard to find.
The strangest thing about this love business is that the more
9.
intensely enthralled two being are with each other the harder they
will try to hurt each other later on.
I wonder whether a bitter enemy would be jealous if he They seem to care about the smallest wound now in the other
discovered that I hated someone else. but they will be inflicting the most scathing one later. Love is not for
philosophers.
14. 18.
The characteristic feature of the loser is to bemoan, in general The most depressing aspect of the lives of the couples you watch
terms, mankind's flaws, biases, contradictions & irrationality -- surreptitiously arguing in restaurants is that they are almost always
without exploiting them for fun and profit. unaware of the true subject of argument.
19.
15.
Nothing is more permanent than "temporary" arrangements,

The test of whether you really liked a book is if you reread it deficits, truces, and relationships; and nothing is more temporary
(and how many times); the test of whether you really liked someone's than "permanent" ones.
company is if you are ready to meet him again and again --the rest is
spin, namedropping, or that variety of sentiment now called self-
20.
esteem.
I attended a symposium, event named after a 4th Century (BC)

16.
Athenian drinking party in which nonnerds talked about love; alas,
there was no drinking but, mercifully, nobody talked about love.
We ask "why is he rich (or poor)?" not "why isn't he richer
(poorer)?";"why is the crisis so deep?" not "why isn't it deeper?".
21.
17.
The most painful moments are not those we spend with
uninteresting people; it is those spent with uninteresting people
When someone starts a sentence with "simply", you should trying hard to be interesting.
expect to hear something very complicated.
22.
It is as difficult to change someone's opinions as it is to change

his tastes.
23. 28.
The opposite of enemy is a dull life. The tragedy of virtue is that the more boring, unoriginal, and
sermonizing the proverb/tweet, the harder it is to implement.
24.
29.
Hatred is much harder to fake than love. You hear of fake love;
never of fake hate. It is the appearance of inconsistency, and not its absence, that
makes people attractive.
25.
30.
To value a person, consider the difference between how
impressive he (she) was at the first encounter and the most recent
one. This, I suspect, was the reason they put Socrates to death.
There is something terribly unattractive about thinking with too
much clarity. Nobody wants to his reasoning to become perfectly
26.
transparent --not to others, not to himself.
Some reticent people use silence to conceal their intelligence;

31.
but most do so to hide the lack of it.
It is easier to remember your emails that were not answered

27.
than emails you did not answer
Usually, what we call "good listener" is someone with skillfully

32.
polished indifference.
People reserve standard compliments to those who do not

threaten their pride; the others they praise by calling "arrogant"
33. 38.
For company, you tend to prefer those who find you interesting Half of what we call arrogant is arrogant; the other half is
over those you find interesting. conviction and beliefs.
34. 39.
Unrequited hate is vastly more diminishing for the self than When a woman says about a man that he is intelligent, she
unrequited love. You can't react by demonizing. means handsome; when a man says about a woman that she is dumb,
he means attractive.
35.
I may forgive someone for harming me; I can't possibly forgive

anyone for boring me.
36.
How superb to become wise without being boring; how sad to be

boring without being wise .
[looking at Bernanke].
37.
It is as difficult to avoid bugging others with advice on how to

exercise and other health matters as it is to stick to an exercise
schedule.
40.
Success, Insuccess, Happiness, and
Stoicism
It is only by accident that what ordinary people say they will do
corresponds to what they will actually do.
41.
42.
Most of the unhappiness in the modern world is the injustice

that, in the past, only some of the males, but all the females, were Success is becoming in middle adulthood what you dreamed to
able to procreate. Equality was made for females, not males. be in late childhood. The rest comes from loss of control.
43.
You are rich if, and only if, money you refuse tastes better than
money you accept.
44.
Success is when you switch from the camp of the hating to the
camp of the hated.
49.
45. It is much harder to be a Stoic when wealthy, powerful, and

respected than when destitute, miserable, and lonely.
To see if you like where you are, without the chains of

dependence, check if you are as happy returning as you were leaving.
This also applies to work, relationships, and many things. 50.
46. Ordinary men regret their words more than their silence; finer
men regret their silence more than their words.
The difference between love and happiness is that those who

talk about love tend to be in love; but those who talk about happiness 51.
tend to be not happy.
A good foe is far more loyal, far more predictable, and, to the
47. clever, far more useful than any admirer
I have been the luckiest man in the world in my selection of 52.

enemies.
Modernity: We created youth without heroism, age without

48. wisdom, and life without grandeur.
Money earned speculating against the crowd and the common 53.
man does not feel as sordid and vulgar as money coming from other
forms of commerce, and not as lowly as money coming from
employment. It is as if it came entirely from the purest philosophical You can tell how uninteresting a person is by asking him who he
insights. finds interesting.
54. Aging
Most people are made for insuccess; they lose their charm and
become unbearable when they succeed.
55.
The two most celebrated acts of courage in history aren't 58.

Homeric fighters, but two Eastern Mediterraneans who died, even
sought death, for their ideas.
The only objective definition of aging is when a person starts to
talk about aging.
56.
59.
If existence were about happiness, more would accept to be
"happy imbeciles".
Decline starts with the replacement of dreams with memories,
reverses with the replacement of dreams with other dreams, and
57. ends with the replacement of memories with other memories.
I wonder if anyone measured the time it takes, at a party, before 60.

a mildly successful stranger who went to Harvard makes others
aware of it.
Since Cato, a certain sign of aging has been when one starts
blaming the new generation for "shallowness" and praising the
previous one for its "values"
61.
Pomponius Atticus, severely ill, tried, the Stoic way, to take his
own life. Having chosen starvation, he was cured of his illness.
The Republic of Letters

62.
I read nothing from the past 300 years; I drink nothing from the
past 4000 years (just wine and water); but I talk to no ordinary man
over 40. A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of 30.
65.
63.
Writing is the art of repeating oneself without anyone noticing.

I never understood why they wrote the obituaries of bureaucrats
after their death.
66.
64.
Most people write so they can remember things; I write to
forget.
Some pursuits are much duller from the inside than outside;
even piracy can be terribly uninteresting. Unless you are good at
detecting dullness you will be trapped for life. 67.
Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close

enough on the surface but, to the nonsucker, not exactly the same
thing.
68.
What they call philosophy, I call literature; what they call

literature I call journalism; what they call journalism I call gossip,
and what they call gossip I call voyeurism.
69. 74.
Writers are remembered for their best work, politicians for their The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the
worst mistakes; and businessmen are almost never remembered. intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination
70. 75.
Charm lies in the unsaid, the unwritten, and the undisplayed. It A maxim allows me to have the last word without even starting a
takes mastery to control silence. conversation.
71. 76.
No author should be considered as having failed until he starts A good maxim should 1) surprise you, 2) be true (counter-
teaching others about writing. intuitively true), and 3) be either symmetric (one assertion, one
negation) or rhythmic.
72.
77.
Hard science gives sensational results, with a horribly boring

process; philosophy gives boring results with a sensational process; Just as there are authors who enjoy "having written" and others
real literature gives sensational results with a sensational process; who enjoy writing, there are books you enjoy reading and others you
and economics gives boring results with a boring process. enjoy having read.
73. 78.
An aphorism is the poetry of ideas. Giving business readers my book is like giving vintage Bordeaux
to drinkers of Diet Coke and listening to their comments about it.
79.
A genius is someone with flaws harder to imitate than his 84.

qualities.
The costs of specialization: Architects build to impress other

80. architects; models are thin to impress other models; academics to
impress other academics; filmmakers to impress other filmmakers,
painters to impress art dealers; but authors who write to impress
With regular books, I read the text and skip the footnotes; with book editors tend to fail.
those written by academics I read the footnotes and skip the text, and
with business books I skip both the text and the footnotes.
85.
81.
I aim to never answer critics, just plan to stay in print as long as
possible --insure that I will be on the shelves long after these critics
"Business books": a category invented by bookstores for writings are dead.
that have no depth, no style, no empirical rigor, and no linguistic
sophistication.
86.
82.
I can predict when someone is about to plagiarize me, and
poorly so, when they claim that Taleb "popularized" the theory of
I wish to say some day about someone "Voilà un homme!" as Black Swan events.
Napoleon said upon meeting Goethe: a mixture of passion, intellect,
and elegance.
87.
83.
Journalism is what disappears a day after it is printed;
electronic journalism is what dies even before it is posted; literature
Just like poets and artists, bureaucrats are born, not made; it aims to never go out of print.
takes normal humans extraordinary effort to keep attention on such
boring tasks.
88.
The Universal and the Particular
You are as alive as the ratio of clichés in your writing.
89.
BusinessBookReaders with my prose are like deaf persons in a

Puccini opera: they may like a thing or two while wondering "what's 91.
the point?"
Common minds find similarities in stories (and situations),

finer minds detect differences.
90.
92.
Businessmen hire people to write books for them; I discovered
that they also hire people to read books for them (with abstracts)
There is nothing deemed harmful (in general) that cannot be
beneficial in some particular instances, and nothing deemed
beneficial that cannot harm you in some circumstances. Universals
are weaker under complexity.
93.
We unwittingly amplify commonalities with friends,

dissimilarities with strangers, and contrasts with enemies.
98.
Fooled by Randomness
The sucker's trap is when you focus on what you know and what
others don't know, rather than the reverse.
99.
94.
Medieval man was a cog in a wheel he did not understand;

Never rid anyone of an illusion unless you can replace it in his modern man is a cog in a more complicated system he thinks he
mind with another illusion. But don't work too hard on it; the understands.
replacement illusion does not even have to be more convincing than
the initial one.
100.
95.
The role of the media is best seen in the journey from Cato the
elder to Sarah Palin. Do some extrapolation if you want to be scared.
Corollary to Moore's laws: every ten years, collective wisdom
degrades by half.
101.
96.
Using, as excuse, others' failure of common sense is in itself a
failure of common sense.
The tragedy of the information age is that the toxicity of data
increases much faster than its benefits.
102.
Before checking the news today, check how much the 400-700
97.
hours of nongossip media exposure in 2007 helped you make sense
of 2008, etc.
The fool views himself more unique, and others more generic;
the wise views himself more generic and others more unique
103.
(Re)Becoming Free
Mental clarity is the child of courage, not the other way around.
Comment: The biggest error since Socrates has been to believe
that lack of clarity is the source of all our ills, not the result of them.
105.
104.
The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates,

Finer men tolerate others' small inconsistencies though not the and a monthly salary.
large ones; lesser men tolerate others' large inconsistencies though
not small ones
106.
I wonder if a lion (or a cannibal) would pay a high premium for

free-range humans.
107.
Someone who says "I am busy" is either declaring incompetence

(and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you.
108.
The difference between slaves (in Roman and Ottoman days)

and today's employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss.
109. 114.
You have a real life if & only if you do not compete with anyone There is no intermediate state between ice and water but there
in any of your pursuits. one is between life and death: employment.
110. 115.
You will be civilized on the day when you can spend a long Only in recent history has "working hard" signaled pride rather
period doing nothing, learning nothing, and improving nothing, than shame for lack of talent, finesse and, mostly, sprezzatura.
without feeling the slightest amount of guilt.
116.
111.
Their idea of the sabbatical is to work six days and rest for one;
I never see the world with more clarity than when I misplace my my idea of the sabbatical is to work for (part of) a day and rest for six.
eyeglasses.
117.
112.
What they call play (gym, travel, sports) look like work; what I
You have a real life when most of what you fear has the call work (effortless daydreaming) looks like play. They lose freedom
titillating prospect of adventure. trying harder; the harder they try, the more captive they become.
118.
113.
In nature we never repeat the same motion. In captivity (office,

If you know, in the morning, what your day looks like with any gym, commute, sports), life is just repetitive stress injury. No
precision, you are a little bit dead -the more precision, the more dead randomness.
you are.
119. 124.
Technology's double punishment is to make us both age Competitive athletes are closer to animals than men; though
prematurely and live longer. never as fast as a cheetah or as strong as an ox.
120.
Most modern technologies are deferred punishment.
121.
We are better at (involuntarily) doing out of the box than

(voluntarily) thinking out of the box. Thinking is largely ornamental,
for show-off, ex post justification, or for ego-propping narratives.
122.
We are hunters; we are only truly alive in these moments when

we improvise; no schedule, just small surprises and stimuli from
environment.
123.
For everything, I use my feeling of boredom in place of a clock,

as a biological wristwatch, though under constraints of politeness.
129.
Aesthetics
Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.
130.
125.
In classical renderings of prominent figures, males are lean &
females are plump; in modern photographs, the opposite.
The genius of Mandelbrot lies in showing that we can achieve
aesthetic clarity without the cost of smoothness.
126.
Beauty is enhanced by a touch of imperfection.
127.
It is a great feat to reach simplicity without recourse to

smoothness.
128.
Almutanabbi boasted that he was the greatest poet; but he did

so using the greatest poetry.
135.
Ethics
Ethical man accords his profession to his beliefs, instead of
according his beliefs to his profession. Rarer and rarer since middle
ages.
131. 136.
You can only convince those persons who think they can benefit I trust everyone except those who tell me they are trustworthy.
from being convinced.
137.
132.
People often need to suspend their self-promotion, and have

I trust people who make a living lying down or standing up more someone in their lives they do not need to impress. This explains dog
than those who do so sitting down. (From a flâneur who reads in ownership.
bed).
138.
133.
I wonder if those who advocate generosity for its rewards notice

Don't trust a man on a salary -except if it is minimum wage. the inconsistency, or if what they call generosity is an investment
Those on bondage and βάναυσοι would do anything to "feed a family". strategy.
(Comment: A generous act is precisely what should aim at no

134.
reward, neither financial nor social nor emotional; deontic not
utilitarian. There is nothing wrong with "generous" acts with
I'd rather be a janitor in a philosophy department than chaired "warm glow" or salvation; these are not to be linguistically
professor at the Harvard Business School; better be a flâneur in New conflated with deontic actions)
York than a hotshot at Davos
139. 144.
I wonder if crooks can conceive that honest people can be The difference between magnificence & arrogance is in what one
shrewder than them. does when nobody is looking.
140.
Pure generosity is when you help the ingrate. Every other form
is self-serving ,
[Kantian ethics]
141.
In Proust there is a character, Morel, who demonizes Nissim

Bertrand, a Jew who lent him money; he becomes anti-Semitic just
so he could escape the feeling of gratitude.
142.
Promising someone good luck as return for good deeds sounds

like a bribe; perhaps the remnant of archaic, pre-deontic pre-classical
morality.
143.
Greatness starts with the replacement of hatred with disdain
148.
Epistemology
Substractive epistemology: the sucker thinks Truth is search for
knowledge; the nonsucker knows Truth is search for ignorance.
149.
Corollary: The best way to spot a charlatan: someone who tells

you what to do, instead of what NOT to do. (Stockbrokers,
Consultants...)
145. 150.
My problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on Happiness; we don't know what it means, nor how to reach it;
birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds but we know extremely well how to avoid unhappiness.
and books on ornithologists written by birds.
151.
146.
Hard science gives sensational results, with a horribly boring

Since Plato Western thought has focused on the notions of True- process; philosophy gives boring results with a sensational process;
False; as commendable as it was, it is high time to shift the concern but literature gives sensational results with a sensational process.
to Robust-Fragile, and social epistemology to Sucker-Nonsucker.
152.
147.
Platonic minds expect life to be like film, with defined endings.

Knowledge is subtractive, not additive; what we subtract APlatonic ones expect film to be life and, except for death, distrust all
(reduction by what does not work, what not to do), not what we add ending.
(what to do).
The Generalized Sucker Problem
153.
In science you need to understand the world; in business you

need others to misunderstand it.
154.
Education makes the wise slightly wiser; but it makes the fool
vastly more dangerous.
155.
It seems that it is the most unsuccessful people who give the

most advice, particularly for writing and financial matters.
156.
Rumors are only valuable when they are denied.
157. 162.
There are two types of people; those who try to win and those Mathematics is to knowledge what an artificial hand is to the
who try to win arguments. They are never the same. real one. Some frauds, like Robert C. Merton, amputate to replace.
158. 163.
You are guaranteed a repetition when you hear the declaration Mediocre men tend to be outraged by small insults, but passive,
"never again". subdued, and silent in front of very large ones
We gloss over great financial crimes (bankers), great cases of

159.
incompetence (Bernanke and the economics establishment)...
People usually apologize so they can do it again.

164.
160.
It is easier to disguise ignorance than knowledge.
Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are

either blind or employed.
161.
The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are

fully aware that they are not free. (Generalized Sucker Problem).
169.
Robustness and Fragility
The best test of robustness to reputational damage is your
emotional state (fear, joy, boredom) when you get an email from a
journalist.
165. 170.
You are only secure if you can lose your fortune without the One should first pick a destination for which one has a good
additional worse insult of having to become humble. map, instead of travel first then use “the best” map, "because there is
(My great-great-great-grandfather's rule). nothing else".
166.
They have a hard time accepting my idea that the only robust
society is the imbecile proof society. I call it more politely
epistemocracy.
167.
Academics are only useful when they try to be useless, (say, as in

mathematics and philosophy); and dangerous when they try to be
useful.
168.
For the robust, an error is information; for the fragile, an error

is an error.
175.
The Ludic Fallacy and Its Extensions
Compliance with the straightjacket of narrow (Aristotelian) logic
and avoidance of fatal inconsistencies are not the same thing.
176.
171.
Real mathematicians understand completeness; real

Just as smooth surfaces, competitive sports, and specialized philosophers understand incompleteness; the rest don't really
work fossilize the mind and body, competitive academia fossilizes the understand anything.
soul.
177.
172.
Sadly, Obama is talking and dreaming about going to the Moon

They agree that chess training only improves chess skills, but and Mars (these belong to the linear domain) when we know nothing
disagree that classroom training (almost) only improves classroom about the complex (volcanoes, economics, climate, etc). Space builds
skills. hubris.
(How? errors in space program are Gaussian; errors in fields

173.
that matter are Black-Gray-Swannish; governments have
exhausted the Gaussian domains).Sorry.
Upon arriving to the hotel the fellow had a porter carry his
luggage; I later saw him lifting weights in the gym.
174.
Technology is the unrelenting mollification of man, a self-

inflicted injury.
182.
The Sacred and the Profane
I now take a hot bath after reading emails from businessmen or
journalists; I then feel purified from the profane until the next email.
183.
178.
In 2500 years, no human came with the brilliance, depth,

You cannot express the holy in terms made for the profane; but elegance, wit, and imagination matching Plato to displace him and
you can discuss the profane in terms made for the holy. protect us from that Platonic legacy.
179.
184.
Atheism/materialism means treating the dead as if they were

unborn. I won't. By respecting the sacred you reinvent religion. The book is the only medium left that hasn't been corrupted by
the profane: everything else on your eyelids manipulates you with an
ad.
180.
Comment: after a long media diet I realize that there is nothing

If you can't detect (w/out understanding) the difference that's not (clumsily) trying to sell you something. I only trust my
between sacred and profane you'll never know what religion library.
means. Same with art . There is nothing wrong w/book as peacock tail signaling of
superiority and ego trip; it's the commercial agenda outside the
181. book that corrupts it.
People used to wear ordinary clothes weekdays, and formal

attire on Sunday. Today it is the exact reverse.
185.
Dealing with the Future
The economy, in brief: they are calmly waiting in line to be
slaughtered while thinking it is for a Broadway show.
186.
187.
You can replace lies with truth; but myth is only displaced with a
narrative. For the ancients, forecasting historical events was an insult to
the God(s); for me it is an insult to man --that is, for some, to science.
188.
I never voice a forecast unless I have taken action on it and I

have something at risk. I go down with the ship.
189.
They would take forecasting more seriously if it were pointed

out to them that they were producing prophecies.
190.
For Seneca, the Stoic sage should withdraw from public efforts
when unheeded and the state is corrupt beyond repair. It is wiser to
wait for self-destruction.
191.
I went to Saudi Arabia to pick up wisdom from old people about

Being a Philosopher and Managing to
forecasting. A few idiots criticized me because of the Saudi treatment Remain one
of women. These hypocrites drive a car with a tank full of Saudi oil,
while critical their gender policies, but don't want me to take what
wisdom I can find.
192.
To be a philosopher is to know by reasoning, and reasoning

only, a priori, what others can only learn from their mistakes, a
posteriori.
193.
True philosophers only need long walks to figure out what

others need crises, accidents, and bankruptcies to determine.
194.
Something finite but with unknown upper bound is

epistemically equivalent to something infinite. I call this epistemic
Infinity.
195.
Politics, Economics, and Other Very
Conscious ignorance, if you can practice it, expands your world; Vulgar Subjects
it can make things infinite.
196.
199.
There is no strictly "rational" definition of "rationality", which is

why I cringe when I hear the word used by social scientists. You can be certain that the CEO of a corporation has a lot to
worry about when he announces publicly that "there is nothing to
worry about".
197.
200.
I threatened to walk out of a lecture hall under Seneca's dictum
that philosophers should avoid speaking like mountebanks.
The 20th C was the bankruptcy of the social utopia. The 21st will
be that of the technological one.
198.
From one Procrustean bed to another: efforts at building
social, political, and medical utopias have caused nightmares;
Academia is as close to sophistry today as the sophists were in many cures and techniques came from martial efforts.
Socrates' day; in fact ironically the academy was there to counter
sophistry. 2400 years and we've learned nothing.
201.
The main difference between government bailouts and smoking

is that in some rare cases the statement "this is my last cigarette"
holds true.
206.
202. The worst damage has been caused by competent people trying
to do good; the best welfare has been brought by incompetent ones
trying to harm.
Economics cannot digest the idea that the collective (and the
aggregate) are disproportionately less predictable than individuals.
207.
203. City-states organize by tinkering; nation-states produce

bureaucracies, empty suits, Bernankes, deficits, and the too big to
fail.
The four most influential moderns: Darwin, Marx, Freud and
(the early) Einstein were scholars but not academics. It is hard to do
genuine work within institutions. 208.
204. The Lebanese (and other Mediterraneans) scorn instructions

but bow to authority; Northern Europeans bow to instructions but
scorn authority.
What makes us fragile is that institutions cannot have the same
virtues (honor, truthfulness, courage, loyalty, tenacity) as
individuals. 209.
205. The differences between Goldman Sachs and the mafia are as
follows: GS has a better legal-regulatory expertise; but the mafia
understands public opinion.
An individual has a conscience, feels shame and honor. The
collective (that is, institutions) does not aggregate them -despicable
bureaucrats. 210.
We worry about "too big", but the biggest error-prone

centralized top-down institution in the world is the US Gov. It keeps
getting bigger.
211. 215.
"It is much easier to scam people for billions than for just CNBC journalists are imbeciles. "You need skills to get a BMW,
millions". (Some thoughts on the Madoff story). skills and monstrous luck to become a Warren Buffet" was turned
into "Taleb says Buffet has no skills". Imbeciles.
212.
216.
At a panel in Moscow, I saw Edmund Phelps who got the

"Nobel" for writings no one reads, theories no one uses, and lectures Socializing with an academic will lead you to avoid confronting
no one understands. him from fear of losing a friend; you will end up putting your social
instinct above truth.
213. 217.
Dubai borrowed to put vanity buildings on postcards; America The curious mind embraces science; the gifted & sensitive, the
and Western Europe need to borrow to just survive. arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist.
218.
214.
Companies, like human cells, are programmed for apoptosis,

"Don't cross a river because it is on average four feet deep". suicide through debt and hidden risks. Bailouts make the process
More generally, the average of expectations is different from the more entertaining.
expectation of averages.

Taleb Aphorisms

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Nassim Nicholas Taleb TABLE

LIFE, HATE, LOVE, ETC. 2

SUCCESS, INSUCCESS, HAPPINESS, AND STOICISM 7

THE REPUBLIC OF LETTERS 10

THE UNIVERSAL AND THE PARTICULAR 13

FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS 14

Poetic & Philosophical (RE)BECOMING FREE 15

Aphorisms AESTHETICS 18

ROBUSTNESS AND FRAGILITY 24

THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE 26

DEALING WITH THE FUTURE 27 Life, Hate, Love, etc.

POLITICS, ECONOMICS, AND OTHER VERY VULGAR

The opposite of success isn't failure, it is name dropping.

Badmouthing is the only genuine expression of admiration.

If you want people to read a book, tell them it is overrated.

Hatred is love with a typo somewhere in the computer code, 13.

Nothing is more permanent than "temporary" arrangements,

I attended a symposium, event named after a 4th Century (BC)

It is as difficult to change someone's opinions as it is to change

Some reticent people use silence to conceal their intelligence;

It is easier to remember your emails that were not answered

Usually, what we call "good listener" is someone with skillfully

People reserve standard compliments to those who do not

I may forgive someone for harming me; I can't possibly forgive

How superb to become wise without being boring; how sad to be

It is as difficult to avoid bugging others with advice on how to

Most of the unhappiness in the modern world is the injustice

45. It is much harder to be a Stoic when wealthy, powerful, and

To see if you like where you are, without the chains of

The difference between love and happiness is that those who

I have been the luckiest man in the world in my selection of 52.

Modernity: We created youth without heroism, age without

The two most celebrated acts of courage in history aren't 58.

I wonder if anyone measured the time it takes, at a party, before 60.

The Republic of Letters

Writing is the art of repeating oneself without anyone noticing.

Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close

What they call philosophy, I call literature; what they call

Hard science gives sensational results, with a horribly boring

A genius is someone with flaws harder to imitate than his 84.

The costs of specialization: Architects build to impress other

BusinessBookReaders with my prose are like deaf persons in a

Common minds find similarities in stories (and situations),

We unwittingly amplify commonalities with friends,

Medieval man was a cog in a wheel he did not understand;

The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates,

I wonder if a lion (or a cannibal) would pay a high premium for

Someone who says "I am busy" is either declaring incompetence

The difference between slaves (in Roman and Ottoman days)

In nature we never repeat the same motion. In captivity (office,

Most modern technologies are deferred punishment.

We are better at (involuntarily) doing out of the box than

We are hunters; we are only truly alive in these moments when

For everything, I use my feeling of boredom in place of a clock,

Beauty is enhanced by a touch of imperfection.

It is a great feat to reach simplicity without recourse to

Almutanabbi boasted that he was the greatest poet; but he did

People often need to suspend their self-promotion, and have

I wonder if those who advocate generosity for its rewards notice

(Comment: A generous act is precisely what should aim at no

In Proust there is a character, Morel, who demonizes Nissim

Promising someone good luck as return for good deeds sounds

LIFE, HATE, LOVE, ETC. 2 

SUCCESS, INSUCCESS, HAPPINESS, AND STOICISM 7 

THE REPUBLIC OF LETTERS 10 

THE UNIVERSAL AND THE PARTICULAR 13 

FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS 14 

Poetic & Philosophical (RE)BECOMING FREE 15 

Aphorisms AESTHETICS 18 

ROBUSTNESS AND FRAGILITY 24 

THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE 26 

DEALING WITH THE FUTURE 27  Life, Hate, Love, etc.