Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The three most addictive things in the world are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.

Never ask a man if he is from Lacedaemonia. If he is, he will tell you. If he is not, why embarrass him?

I suspect that the readiest way to determine a person's intelligence is to look at the number of his enemies.

Academia is a large collective fraud.

If you want to annoy a academic, tell him that his work is 'interesting.'

The greatest lesson of my life is that I never learned from my mistakes. I only learned from my victories.

Never trust a man who reads the newspaper to get information. Trust the one who reads it to find out what opinions are being pushed.

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.

To be a good philosopher, you need to be a good bullshit detector.

I can’t believe how much time people waste on things that don’t matter.

The rich are not just people who have money; they are people who have options.

Never eat anything that your great-grandmother would not recognize as food.

To understand the world, you must be a generalist. To make a living, you must be a specialist.

If you want to be a philosopher, write aphorisms. If you want to be a professor, write books.

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.

Modernity: we created a system where people are judged by their ability to tell stories rather than by their ability to deliver results.

Never trust a man who needs a subtitle for his job.

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

The more you read, the more you know. The more you know, the smarter you grow. The smarter you grow, the stronger your voice, when speaking your mind, or making your choice.

Avoid professions where you are paid for your opinions rather than for results.