Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Please, don't drive a school bus blindfolded.

Medieval man was a cog in a wheel he did not understand; modern man is a cog in a complicated system he thinks he understands.

He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once. And someone who has made plenty of errors—though never the same error more than once—is more reliable than someone who has never made any.

I've debated many economists who claim to specialize in risk and probability: when one takes them slightly outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability, they fall apart, with the disconsolate face of a gym rat in front of a gangster hit man.

My dream—the solution—is that we would have a National Entrepreneur Day, with the following message: Most of you will fail, disrespected, impoverished, but we are grateful for the risks you are taking and the sacrifices you are making for the sake of the economic growth of the planet and pulling others out of poverty. You are at the source of our antifragility. Our nation thanks you.

Journalists make me feel dirty.

Thinking is for showing off.

Business folk are all scoundrels.

CNBC journalists are idiots.

Nobel prize guy is an idiot.

Education is bad for you.

I trust prostitutes more than bankers.

Never trust a wage slave.

Those with brains and no balls become mathematicians, those with balls and no brains join the mafia, those with no balls and no brains become economists, and those with balls and brains become entrepreneurs and traders.

Hotel heuristic: In a new hotel, always reject the first room they give you.

Attention authors: if a reviewer writes an unfair review of your work, contact me, I can be very unfair in reviewing his review.

Imbeciles summarize the black swan by 'shit happens.' Intelligent people say 'Let us learn how not to be a Turkey.'

Studying neurobiology to understand humans is like studying ink to understand literature.

Be polite, but ignore comments, praise, and criticism from people you wouldn't hire.

Intellect without balls is like a racecar without tires.