Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

Only fools need suffer to learn.

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

Marlo taught me things I thought I knew.

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.

Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom.

Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Give me a log hut, with only a simple bench, Mark Hopkins on one end and I on the other, and you may have all the buildings, apparatus and libraries without him.

He is a fool who only sees the mischiefs that are past.

Experience is the schoolmaster of fools.

A fool, Mr, Edgeworth, is one who has never made an experiment.

I am grateful to Allan Donald for his guidance and subtle nuances that he taught me.

Fools multiply when wise men are silent.

Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools.

To a fool time brings only age not wisdom.

Anyone who feels like a fool has made a good beginning.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that; for it is true we may give advice, but we cannot give conduct.

Only a fool has no regrets and I'm not a fool.

To err is human, but to persevere in error is only the act of a fool.

Even if misfortune is only good for bringing a fool to his senses, it would still be just to deem it good for something.

Silence is the only answer you should give to the fools. Where ignorance speaks, intelligence should not give advices.

Cato used to assert that wise men profited more by fools than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men.

Silence is the best answer to a fool.

Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.