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Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

"Avoid banality; mastery is about complexity up to the edge of discomfort""If you want to stress-test something, you have to break it""A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding. A failure is not an error""History teaches us that things that have lasted long without intervention have a reason""Try to be unpredictable and keep your options open""Your reputation is harmed the most by what you say to defend it""The problem with complex systems is that we often only understand them retrospectively""Intelligence without principle is luck, not skill""The most intelligent people in the world are those who don’t need to be told""You cannot make a living by predicting things; only by betting""We don’t need more information, we need less""The robustness of an idea is tested by failure, not success""True success is exiting some very chancy risks""Never ask a barber if you need a haircut""Information wants to be reduced. Lucky for us, it perishes""Courage is the only virtue you can't fake""Never ask anyone for their opinion, forecast, or recommendation. Just ask them what they have—or don’t have—in their portfolio""There are two types of people in the world: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same""The three most damaging words in the history of mankind are 'a great idea'""The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination"