Nassim Nicholas Taleb

[A] theory is a very dangerous thing to have.

Simplicity is not so simple to attain.

Just as being nice to the arrogant is no better than being arrogant toward the nice; being accommodating toward anyone committing a nefarious action condones it.

Daily news and sugar confuse our system in the same manner.

My idea of the modern Stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.

Half of life—the interesting half of life—we don't even have a name for.

The worst side effect of wealth is the social associations it forces on its victims, as people with big houses end up socializing with other people with big houses.

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

You can be an intellectual yet still be an idiot. 'Educated philistines' have been wrong on everything from Stalinism to Iraq to low-carb diets.

The antifragility of the higher level may require the fragility—and sacrifice—of the lower one.

Much of modern life is preventable chronic stress injury.

If humans fight the last war, nature fights the next one.