We know from chaos theory that even if you had a perfect model of the world, you’d need infinite precision in order to predict future events. With sociopolitical or economic phenomena, we don’t have anything...

What we need to do is break the financial community’s grip on society.

My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal

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.

I drive a hybrid, moving into an electric car. I only drink tap water, never consume food that’s travelled.

People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels – people you don’t want to resemble when you grow up

Further, in writing, I feel corrupt and unethical if I have to look up a subject in a library as part of the writing itself. This acts as a filter–it is the only filter. If...

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

Individuals should think about the worst-case scenarios and plan for them. The world will be crazier than you think it will be. Put money away, and then you can live with much more freedom.

I’ve been telling anyone willing to listen that banks have a tendency to sit on time bombs while convincing themselves that they are conservative and nonvolatile.

If the past, by bringing surprises, did not resemble the past previous to it (what I call the past’s past), then why should our future resemble our current past?

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

A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.

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

In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations

The grandchildren should not bear the debts of the grandparents.

I have never had personal debt and never will.

The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free

Most info-Web-media-newspaper types have a hard time swallowing the idea that knowledge is reached (mostly) by removing junk from peoples heads

A country’s assets reside in the tinkerers, the hobbyists, and the risk-takers.

Nature builds things that are antifragile. In the case of evolution, nature uses disorder to grow stronger. Occasional starvation or going to the gym also makes you stronger, because you subject your body to stressors...

If you are an Arabic-speaking, Greek-Orthodox going to a French school it makes you deeply sceptical if you have to listen to three different accounts of the Crusades – one from the Muslim side, one...

Just as no monkey is as good-looking as the ugliest of humans, no academic is worthier than the worst of the creators

I hated school because I liked to daydream and the system tried to stop me from that.

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

Doctors most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of abense

Someone with a low degree of epistemic arrogance is not too visible, like a shy person at a cocktail party. We are not predisposed to respect humble people, those who try to suspend judgement. Now...

When you ask people, ‘What’s the opposite of fragile?,’ they tend to say robust, resilient, adaptable, solid, strong. That’s not it. The opposite of fragile is something that gains from disorder.

Inequalities of wealth lead to a dispersion in wealth for all.

Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.

When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.

Capitalism has forced everyone to overoptimize in order to compete.

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!...

The Internet allows the small guy a global marketplace. But technology is harmful in the sense that we get too much information from it. Because of the web we get 10 times the amount of...

What I learned on my own I still remember

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

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

The classical man’s worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man’s worst fear is just death

true humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others; the rest is either shyness or good marketing

In social policy, when we provide a safety net, it should be designed to help people take more entrepreneurial risks, not to turn them into dependents. This doesn’t mean that we should be callous to...

Paul Krugman is a danger to society!

The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.

Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears

Fragility is the quality of things that are vulnerable to volatility.

I select a very small number of things to be sceptical about, such as markets, and on these I am hypersceptic. But I want to be fooled by randomness in art. I want the ceremonial...

Bailing out every bank that fails makes the system riskier, not safer.

The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination

Globalization has created this interlocking fragility. At no time in the history of the universe has the cancellation of a Christmas order in New York meant layoffs in China.

Deficits are like putting dynamite in the hands of children. They can get out of control very quickly.

Probability and expectation are not the same. Its probability and probability times the pay off.