Antifragile Taleb Quotes & Sayings

In idleness there is a perpetual despair. — Thomas Carlyle

Life is a rare fantasy that can be made a reality by being objective. — Janvier Chouteu-Chando

I can't even imagine what it's like and right now I'm like in shock, I can't believe that I'm Olympic Champion. — Tara Lipinski

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

If you're predisposed to get fat and want to be as lean as you can be without compromising your health, you have to restrict carbohydrates and so keep your blood sugar and insulin levels low. — Gary Taubes

Maybe there was something safe in the not knowing, something that made it feel like all the mundane questions you were usually required to ask were not all that important after all. — Jennifer E. Smith

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

The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical construct. To say, as many do, that the difficulties of nations are not due to people, but to poor ideology and land-use management is sophistic. — Pete Wilson

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

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

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

Men always say, "Let's see what you can do." If we always talk and never work we will not accomplish anything. — Belva Ann Lockwood

Mistakes are the only universal form of originality. — Mason Cooley

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

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

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

The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Instead of kissing me, he nuzzled my ear with his nose and I felt more than heard him take a long, deep breath. "God, you smell so good, Sara. You make me want to eat you all up."
Oh God.
I wanted to be eaten all up. — Emme Rollins

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

Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul. — Wayne W. Dyer

Thanks to our friends at the dot-ME Registry, WordPress is able to offer one of the shortest and most effective URLs available today. — Matt Mullenweg

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

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

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

They, astounded at the flash of the armor, and the swiftness of the charge, and attacked by showers of arrows and missiles, half naked as they were, never stopped to resist but gave way. — Arrian

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

When we judge others we leave no room to love them. — Mother Teresa

When it was too late for rescue, it was still early enough for revenge. — Kazuo Ishiguro

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