Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

I tried to oppose the academic to the marketplace.

Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.

Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge, others just gargle.

One can't write without having read - you have to read before beginning to write - and universities offer a very good opportunity to read.

To know the rules of the game, you have to be educated.

I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike

Educated fools; from uneducated schools.

I know nothing, because I know too much, and understand not nearly enough and never will.

[M]y work, which I've done for a long time, was not pursued in order to gain the praise I now enjoy, but chiefly from a craving after knowledge, which I notice resides in me more than in most other men. And therewithal, whenever I found out anything remarkable, I have thought it my duty to put down my discovery on paper, so that all ingenious people might be informed thereof.

All his life, Klaus had believed that if you read enough books, you could solve any problem, but now he wasn't so sure.

I jealously guard my research time and I love fully immersing myself in those dusty old books and papers. It's one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.

I know very well that because I am unlettered some presumptuous people will think they have the right to criticize me, saying that I am an uncultured man. What stupid fools! Do they not know that I could reply to them as Marius did to the Roman patricians: "Do those who pride themselves on the works of other men claim to challenge mine?

My alma mater was books, a good library.

Men are more readily contented with no intellectual light than with a little; and wherever they have been taught to acquire some knowledge in order to please others, they have most generally gone on to acquire more, to please themselves.

Wherever learning breeds specialists, the sum of human culture is enhanced thereby. That is the illusion and consolation of specialists.

We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise.

Your curse is that you have chosen a form that requires endless study .... It means you have to read, you have to observe, you have to think, so that when you turn your imagination on, it has the fuel to do its job.

The possession of a library, or the free use of it, no more constitutes learning, than the possession of wealth constitutes generosity.

In Washington, it's dog eat dog. In academia, it's exactly the opposite.

When curiosity turns to serious matters, it's called research.

Education is very important. I think I understand education.

To use Newton's words, our efforts up till this moment have but turned over a pebble or shell here and there on the beach, with only a forlorn hope that under one of them was the gem we were seeking. Now we have the sieve, the minds, the hands, the time, and, particularly, the dedication to find those gems-no matter in which favorite hiding place the children of distant worlds have placed them.

I have not eaten enough of the tree of knowledge, though in my profession I am obligated to feed on it regularly.