Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

It is a tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know - the less a man knows, the more sure it is that he knows everything.

I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth.

Nothing is as dangerous as an ignorant friend; a wise enemy is to be preferred.

With regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them.

Proof is boring. Proof is tiresome. Proof is an irrelevance. People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.

We always have a tendency to see those things that do not exist and to be blind to the great lessons that are right there before our eyes.

All you know is what you think you know, but that isn't always what's real.

One Man may be more cunning than another, but not more cunning than every body else.

There's the bullshit you know that you know; the bullshit you don't know and know you don't know; and the bullshit you just think you know but really don't.

That it's possible not to see a lie even when it's in front of us.

No one sees what is before his feet: they scan the tracks of heaven.

He'd been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.

Nothing convinces persons of a weak understanding so effectually, as what they do not comprehend.

He must be able to mystify his officers and men by false reports and appearances, and thus keep them in total ignorance.

I think that a good person can sometimes do wrong out of ignorance or weakness or wrong thinking, but when hard times come, the goodness wins out after all. And a bad person can often seem good and trustworthy for a long time, but when hard times come, the evil in him gets revealed.

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.

In their vanity men focus on what they wish to hear and miss the hidden meaning, the lurking threat.

For all people strive to grasp what they do not know, while none strive to grasp what they already know; and all strive to discredit what they do not excel in, while none strive to discredit what they do excel in. This is why there is chaos.

Information is bad for knowledge.

The gods are blind. And men see only what they wish" - Tyrion Lannister

Most people fail in life because they major in minor things.

It is a blind goose that cometh to the fox's sermon.

If you send a damned fool to St. Louis, and you don't tell them he's a damned fool, they'll never find out.

The bullshitter is neither on the side of the true or the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.