Quotes from the book "Antifragile"

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a very interesting author, he has radical thinking and he really impressed the way he thinks differently from the crowd. Here are some quotes that hit me from his book "Antifragile".

• We are largely better at doing than we are at thinking.
• The world as a whole has never been richer, and it has never been more heavily in debt, living off borrowed money.
• The more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.
• If I never hear anything wrong said about you. You have proven yourself incapable of generating envy.
• If nature ran the economy, it would not continuously bail out its living members to make them live forever.
• 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.
• When we look at risks in extremistan, we don't look at the evidence (evidence comes too late), we look at potential damage.
• Tightly controlling the speed of engines leads to instability.
• Small forest fires periodically cleanse the system of the most flammable material, so this does not have the opportunity to accumulate.
• A donkey equally famished and thirsty caught at an equal distance between food and water would unavoidably die of hunger or thirst.
• No stability without volatility.
• The thinker lacking a word for "blue" is handicapped; not the doer.
• It's much easier to sell "Look what I did for you" than "Look what I avoided for you".
• The naturalistic fallacy implies that what is natural is not necessarily right.
• The sea gets deeper as you go further into it.
• Success brings an asymmetry: you now have a lot more to lose than to gain. you are hence fragile.
• Wealth is the slave of the wise man and master of the fool.
• If I have "nothing to lose" then it is all gain and I am antifragile.
• Fragility implies more to lose than to gain, equals more downside than upside, and equals unfavorable asymmetry.
• Nothing can be done both hastily and safely.
• Provide for the worst; the best can take care of itself.
• If you dislike someone, leave him alone or eliminate him; don't attack him verbally.
• Be crazy but retain the rationality of choosing the upper bound when you see it
• Option = asymmetry + rationality
• We had been putting our suitcases on top of a cart with wheels, but nobody thought of putting tiny wheels directly under the suitcase for a long time.
• When you spend time on the bridge of a ship with a large compass in front, you can easily develop the impression that the compass is directing the ship rather than merely reflecting its direction.
• British government documents, as early as fifty years ago, an aim for education other than the one we have today: raising values, making good citizens, and learning, NOT economic growth.
• As Yogi Berra said "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is.
• Traders trade -> Traders figure out techniques and products -> Academic economists find formulas and claim traders are using them -> New traders believe academics -> blowups (from theory-induced fragility)
• Practitioners don't write; they do. Birds fly and those who lecture them are the ones who write their story.
• No, we don't put theories into practice. We create theories out of practice.
• Before the thirteenth century, no more than five persons in the whole of Europe knew how to perform a division.  However, builders could figure out the resistance of materials without the equations we have today.
• Lions in captivity live longer; they are technically richer, and they are guaranteed job security for life, if these are the criteria you are focusing on.
• We do not study for life, but only for the lecture room.
• Much of what other people know isn't worth knowing.
• The apollonian and the Dionysian. One is measured, balanced, rational, and imbued with reason and self-restraint; the other is dark, visceral, wild, untamed, and hard to understand, emerging from the inner layers of ourselves.
• You decide principally based on fragility, not probability. 
• There are close to eight thousand microearthquakes daily on planet Earth, that is, those below 2 on the Richter scale about three million a year.
• So knowledge grows by subtraction much more than by addition.
• Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.
• 99% of internet traffic is attributable to less than 1% of sites. 99% of book sales come from less than 1% of authors.
• A philosopher should be known for one single idea, not more.
• Time has sharp teeth that destroy everything. Time burns but leaves no ashes.
• The future is in the past. Actually, there is an Arabic proverb to that effect: He who does not have a past has no future.
• Investors are led to overestimate their chances of success.
• We rely more on water than on cell phones but because water does not change and cell phones do, we are prone to thinking that cell phones play a larger role than they do.
• What Mother Nature does is rigorous until proven otherwise; what humans and science do is flawed until proven otherwise.
• Telling people not to smoke seems to be the greatest medical contribution of the last sixty years.
• If all the medications were dumped in the sea, it would be better for mankind but worse for the fish.
• What is called "healthy" is generally unhealthy, just as "social" networks are antisocial, and the "knowledge"-  based economy is typically ignorant.
• Irregularity has its benefits in some areas; regularity has its detriments.
• A half-person is not someone who does not have an opinion, just someone who does not take risks for it.
• Dignity is worth nothing unless you earn it unless you are willing to pay a price for it.
• Predicting any prediction without skin in the game can be as dangerous for others as unmanned nuclear plants without the engineer sleeping on the premises; pilots should be on the plane.
• If you see fraud and don't say fraud, you are a fraud.
• Postdictors, who explain things after the fact - because they are in the business of talking always look smarter than predictors.
• Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference.
• Behind you is the sea, before you, the enemy. You are vastly outnumbered. All you have is a sword and courage. - A king after burning the ships that brought them to enemy territory.
• Never put your enemy's back to the wall.
• If you ever have to choose between a mobster's promise and a civil servant's, go with the mobster. Anytime. Institutions do not have a sense of honor, individuals do.
• Being self-owned is a state of mind.
• Definition of a free person: Someone who cannot be squeezed into doing something he would otherwise never do.

Happy Reading !!!