Talk:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Unsourced

 * Scientists don’t know what they are talking about when they talk about religion. Religion has nothing to do with belief, and I don’t believe it has any negative impact on people’s lives outside of intolerance. Why do I go to church? It’s like asking, why did you marry that woman? You make up reasons, but it’s probably just smell. I love the smell of candles. It’s an aesthetic thing.
 * Avoid being thought of as being overly egotistical: when the mask slips, there you are.
 * Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible’, ‘never’, ‘too difficult’ too often, drop him or her from your social network. *Never take ‘no’ for an answer (conversely, take most ‘yeses’ as ‘most probably’).
 * Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.
 * 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.
 * Go to parties. You can’t even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.
 * Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word.
 * Learn to fail with pride — and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error — by mastering the error part.
 * It’s not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.
 * We cannot truly plan, because we do not understand the future–but this is not necessarily a bad news. We could plan while bearing in mind such limitations. It just takes guts.
 * If something is going on, I hear about it. I like to talk to people, I socialise. Television is a waste of time. Human contact is what matters.