Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

This deficit that we have threatens our very way of life, and everything needs to be on the table.

Let's push the Pentagon off the fiscal cliff.

For a quarter-century, and changing only very recently, the main IMF prescription has been budgetary belt-tightening for patients much too poor to own belts. IMF led austerity has frequently resulted in riots, coups, and the collapse of public services.

The polls are with us on this. They say the American people, more than anything, want to see spending cuts rather than tax increases.

The sky isn't falling. We're not going to have more meteors hit because of sequestration.

Gentlemen, if we don't cut spending we will be bankrupt. Yes, the medicine is harsh, but the patient requires it in order to live. Should we withhold the medicine? No. We are not wrong. We did not seek election and win in order to manage the decline of a great nation.

This is taking place inside Europe. This is taking place inside a once great nation. The nation that invented democracy. We are on the edge of total social breakdown. And frankly, as far as the euro is concerned and the austerity measures are concerned, the medicine is killing the patient.

[D]ebt increases that didn't arise either from war or from extraordinary financial crisis are entirely associated with hard-line conservative governments.

Too often in recent history liberal governments have been wrecked on rocks of loose fiscal policy.

Now, 'the fiscal cliff' is a name that the media came up with, but some of us have been saying for years, 'You have got to stop the out of control federal spending, or you will end up at this point.' We're there.

Obama did inherit a deficit when he came into office. Why this fact justifies racking up vastly more debt and bigger deficits is a logical mystery.

If we continue to allow the federal government to live beyond its means, we will all soon have to live beneath ours.

When George W. Bush entered office, the national debt was $5 trillion. When he left, it was $10 trillion. I think the administration spent too much money.

The entitlement state has driven us into insolvency.

I hate big government, but I really hate a government that doesn't work. So when 'they say we either have to raise taxes or cut core services,' it's actually a 'false choice.'

Sequestration was not designed to be anyone's ideal method for getting our hands around government spending, and it certainly isn't mine.

The idea that more taxes and more government spending is the best way to help hardworking middle class taxpayers - that's an old idea that's failed every time it's been tried.

If we have an economic crisis in the Western world it's because the government makes up 50 percent or more of the economy. This is a cancer that is taking away people's freedom.

The country - or the government - is headed for bankruptcy. So we're going to be continuing to speak out against corporate welfare as something that hurts everybody except those direct beneficiaries.

This program that the Republican majority has taken us toward as a country is leading us to fiscal bankruptcy.

The problem is government spends too much. So raising taxes is what politicians do, instead of reducing spending.

We should reduce total government spending as a percentage of the economy.

In order to reduce the deficit, there has to be revenue in addition to cuts.

Tax increases slow economic growth. Why would you raise taxes? We need to reform spending, the tens of trillions of unfunded liabilities can never be funded by tax increases, that can only be fixed by reducing spending.

As families and small businesses alike are tightening their belts to account for the worsening economy, they have every right to ask: 'Why isn't my government doing the same?'