Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Modernity widened the distance between the sensational and the relevant.

Injecting some confusion stabilizes the system.

I have respect for mother nature's methods of robustness (billions of years allow most of what is fragile to break); classical thought is more robust (in its respect for the unknown, the epistemic humility) than the modern post-Enlightenment naïve pseudoscientific autism. Thus my classical values make me advocate the triplet of erudition, elegance, and courage; against modernity’s phoniness, nerdiness and philistinism.

An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.

A competitive athlete is painful to look at; trying hard to become an animal rather than a man, he will never be as fast as a cheetah or as strong as an ox.

Ethical man accords his profession to his beliefs, instead of according his beliefs to his profession.

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

Social science means inventing a certain brand of human we can understand.

The tragedy of virtue is that the more obvious, boring, unoriginal, and sermonizing the proverb, the harder it is to implement.

We are robust when errors in the representation of the unknown and understanding of random effects do not lead to adverse outcomes —fragile otherwise.

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

We learn the most from fools ... yet we pay them back with the worst ingratitude.