"I have two ways of learning from history: from the past, by reading the elders; and from the future, thanks to my Monte Carlo toy."

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

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“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

"Disneyworld…is a historical reconstruction as sanitised as the Kremlin's, and a future vision as uncognisant of contemporary pointers as Peter Pan's. It is a magic carpet under which everything has be…"

— Alan Coren

Journalism1938–2007

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"At this stage in my life, a polemic on the Ayodhya affair is essentially a blast from the past. In recent years, I have reoriented my scholarly interests towards more fundamental philosophical studies…"

— Koenraad Elst

Indology1959

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"I think the joy of reading any book is that you enter where you can, like reading a poem. Sometimes we start off with a title or we enjoy a piece for its sonic effect, an image, or innovation. Reading…"

— Willie Perdomo

Literature1967

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"Science Fiction has long been babbling about cosmic destructions and the ending of either physical or civilized worlds, but it has all been displaced babble. SF has been carrying on about near-future …"

— R. A. Lafferty

Literature1914–2002

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