Antifragile Nassim Taleb Quotes & Sayings

Curiosity is antifragile, like an addiction, and is magnified by attempts to satisfy it - books have a secret mission and ability to multiply, as everyone who has wall-to-wall bookshelves knows well. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Death is the One Big Mistake that none of us EVER plans to make. — Chuck Palahniuk

There were 84 original episodes. It was rated No. 1 and No. 2 on the Fox Children's Network. We figured it was time to make it available to people who have never watched it. — Howie Mandel

Some psychological and sociological conditioning occurs in every man's life and this affects the decisions he makes. But we must resist the modern concept that all sin can be explained merely on the basis of conditioning. — Francis Schaeffer

I am not here to live forever, as a sick animal. Recall that the antifragility of a system comes from the mortality of its components - and I am part of that larger population called humans. I am here to die a heroic death for the sake of the collective, to produce offspring (and prepare them for life and provide for them), or eventually, books - my information, that is, my genes, the antifragile in me, should be the ones seeking immortality, not me. Then — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Russians have different far lofty ambitions; more of a spiritual kind. It's more about your relationship with God . — Vladimir Putin

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

Is the most antifragile place on the planet; it benefits from shocks that take place in the rest of the world. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Recall that the fragile wants tranquility, the antifragile grows from disorder, and the robust doesn't care too much. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

We can simplify the relationships between fragility, errors, and antifragility as follows. When you are fragile, you depend on things following the exact planned course, with as little deviation as possible - for deviations are more harmful than helpful. This is why the fragile needs to be very predictive in its approach, and, conversely, predictive systems cause fragility. When you want deviations, and you don't care about the possible dispersion of outcomes that the future can bring, since most will be helpful, you are antifragile. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

With few exceptions, those who dress outrageously are robust or even antifragile in reputation; those clean-shaven types who dress in suits and ties are fragile to information about them. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

It hit me right there and then that these antifragile hormetic responses were just a form of redundancy, and all the ideas of Mother Nature converged in my mind. It is all about redundancy. Nature likes to overinsure itself. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape. — Blaise Pascal

My point taken further is that True and False (hence what we call "belief") play a poor, secondary role in human decisions; it is the payoff from the True and the False that dominates-and it is almost always asymmetric, with one consequence much bigger than the other, i.e., harboring positive and negative asymmetries (fragile or antifragile). Let me explain. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Seneca and stoicism as a back door to explain why everything antifragile has to have more upside than downside — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Painting is a slow process; it takes time to get there, you learn little by little and always want the next painting to be better than the last. For me, success is about this, seeing the slow progress in my work. — Ali Banisadr

We have no children Harriet. Or, rather, I have no children. You have one child. — Doris Lessing

Let me be more aggressive: we are largely better at doing than we are at thinking, thanks to antifragility. I'd rather be dumb and antifragile than extremely smart and fragile, any time. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. — Thomas Jefferson

For the antifragile, shocks bring more benefits (equivalently, less harm) as their intensity increases (up to a point). — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

With my book in one hand
And my drink in the other
What more could I want

But fame,
Better health,
And ten million dollars? — Kenneth Burke

And we can almost always detect antifragility (and fragility) using a simple test of asymmetry: anything that has more upside than downside from random events (or certain shocks) is antifragile; the reverse is fragile. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I'm the inescapable curse that caught you when you opened your door. — Pam Godwin

Don't aim to be perfect! Aim to be antifragile — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nature builds things that are antifragile. In the case of evolution, nature uses disorder to grow stronger. Occasional starvation or going to the gym also makes you stronger, because you subject your body to stressors and gain from them. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The process of discovery (or innovation, or technological progress) itself depends on antifragile tinkering, aggressive risk bearing rather than formal education. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If you saw her in these moments, you might think she was collecting her thoughts in order to go forward. But I see it another way: Her mind is being overwhelmed by two processes that must simultaneously proceed at full steam. One is to deal with and live in the present world. The other is to re-experience and mourn something that happened long ago. It is as though her lightness pulls her toward heaven, but the extra gravity around her keeps her earthbound. — Steve Martin

It is often the mistakes of others that benefit the rest of us and, sadly, not them ... For the antifragile, harm from errors should be less than the benefits. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb