"ever engage in detailed overexplanations of why something is important: one debases a principle by endlessly justifying it."

Nassim Nicholas Taleb Mathematics See all quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb →

React to this quote

More by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.”

“Professor Karl Pearson... devised the first test of nonrandomness... He examined millions of runs of what was called a Monte Carlo ... He discovered... the runs were not purely random. ...Philosophers of statistics call this the reference case problem to explain that there is no true attainable randomness in practice, only in theory.”

“Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love.”

“Greatness starts with the replacement of hatred with polite disdain.”

“When conflicted between two choices, take neither.”

“Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Evangelical Christianity conspires with technical and economic rationalism. In the end, they both require a commitment to “duty” that masks unspeakable violence and injustice."

— Curtis White

Literature1951

#justice

"he magician emerges from bed and we recount our tale. Her response lacks gratitude: stammering furiously, she chides us for the damage to her lawns and flowerbed. The boy is smacked; I am Spasmed; we …"

— Jonathan Stroud

Literature1970

#justice

"We must not be enticed by mathematically attractive assumptions into pretending that the contingencies of men's social positions and the asymmetries of their situations somehow even out in the end. Ra…"

— John Rawls

Philosophy1921–2002

#justice

"Primitive superstition lies just below the surface of even the most tough-minded individuals, and it is precisely those who most fight against it who are the first to succumb to its suggestive effects…"

— Carl Jung

Psychology1852–1924

#justice