Nassim Nicholas Talebs Quotes & Sayings

America could carry on a two years' war by the confiscation of the property of disaffected persons, and be made happy by their expulsion. Say not that this is revenge, call it rather the soft resentment of a suffering people, who, having no object in view but the good of all, have staked their own all upon a seemingly doubtful event. Yet it is folly to argue against determined hardness; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is steeled with prejudice. — Thomas Paine

Maturity is simply the process of discovering that everything you believed in when you were young is false and that all the things you refused to believe in turn out to be true. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Recent studies have considered the detection of a spaceship visiting our parish of the galaxy. In my opinion that last thought should bring a blush to every human cheek ... Fecklessness might be the main theme of the aliens' report on the new-found source of radio pollution ... that emanates from beings who have mastered a lot of physics, chemistry and biology and yet let their children starve-while all around their planet the energy of their mother star runs to waste in a desert of space. — Nigel Calder

If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I remember at The Quilted Giraffe, when I was when working there to try out for the sous-chef position. I really wanted it, and the woman working the line next to me kept messing up and making me look bad. The last day of my kitchen trail, I just said to her very quietly, 'Do me a favor and get out of my way, because I want this job.' — Tom Colicchio

To realise one's destiny is a person's only real obligation. — Paulo Coelho

...the quality of certain scraps of verse which take hold of us and stay in our memories, we do not understand why, at first: all the words being the right words, none of them is conspicuous, and so they all seem inconspicuous, therefore we wonder what it is about them that makes their message take hold. — Mark Twain

Dramaturgically, you always hear that you want to see things in the moment, you want to see things happen, you don't want to talk about things, but with "Friends," it was more fun when they talked about it. — Marta Kauffman