Information is antifragile; it feeds more on attempts to harm it than it does on efforts to promote it.

Don't ask the barber whether you need a haircut, and don't ask an academic if what he does is relevant.

While in theory randomness is an intrinsic property, in practice, randomness is incomplete information.

We favor the visible, the embedded, the personal, the narrated, and the tangible; we scorn the abstract.

Restaurants get you in with food to sell you liquor; religions get you in with belief to sell you rules.

Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.

It is much harder to become independent if you are wealthy than to become wealthy if you are independent.

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

Someone bemoaned that there were so few women in economics. But there are also very few men in economics.

I don't go to the doctor except when I'm very ill, and when I go to India, I drink a drop of local water.

The sucker's trap is when you focus on what you know and what others don't know, rather than the reverse.

The fragile wants tranquility, the antifragile grows from disorder, and the robust doesn't care too much.

You don't become completely free by just avoiding being a slave; you also need to avoid becoming a master.

Make sure that you are in a situation where the constant mistakes are small and can be used for something.

People used to wear ordinary clothes weekdays, and formal attire on Sunday. Today it is the exact reverse.

But it remains the case that you know what is wrong with a lot more confidence than you know what is right.

The next time you experience a blackout, take some solace by looking at the sky. You will not recognize it.

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

The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments.

It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one.

We humans lack imagination, to the point of not even knowing what tomorrow's important things will look like.

Learn to fail with pride - and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error - by mastering the error part.

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

Life is a tightrope between two errors: generalizing the wrong particular and particularizing the wrong general.

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

Bankers, they're not harmed by their mistakes. They benefit when things go right, and the society pays the price.

Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee.

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

The fool generalizes the particular; the nerd particularizes the general; some do both; and the wise does neither

Bitcoin is the beginning of something great: a currency without a government, something necessary and imperative.

A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point.

I always remind myself that what one observes is at best a combination of variance and returns, not just returns.

You get pseudo-order when you seek order; you only get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.

The best philosophers were not academics, but had another job, so their philosophy was not corrupted by careerism.

I'm a capitalist but one who is smallist and localist, and who favours businesses where owners are still in charge.

I don't know anyone on Wall Street who goes to work every day thinking of anything but how to increase their bonus.

There are secrets to our world that only practice can reveal, and no opinion or analysis will ever capture in full.

Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.

When some systems are stuck in a dangerous impasse, randomness and only randomness can unlock them and set them free.

Corporations take the humanity out of trade - they take the happiness out and replace it with something that is ugly.

Probability is not about the odds, but about the belief in the existence of an alternative outcome, cause, or motive.

The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one.

Anything organic requires some dose of variability so it can adapt all the time, and fixing things is not a good idea.

Janet Yellen at the FED is equivalent to having a biology schoolteacher who has never seen blood perform brain surgery.

At no point in history have so many non-risk-takers, that is, those with no personal exposure, exerted so much control.

I remind myself of Einstein's remark that common sense is nothing but a collection of misconceptions acquired by age 18.

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

Never, never, never think - that's one lesson you should have in life. Never think that lack of variability is stability.

The fastest way to become rich is to socialize with the poor; the fastest way to become poor is to socialize with the rich.

The central idea in The Black Swan is that: rare events cannot be estimated from empirical observation since they are rare.

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