"You may not be able to change the world but can at least get some entertainment and make a living out of the epistemic arrogance of the human race."

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

"It is interesting to note that scientific men all over the world are awakening to the fact that the flesh of animals as food is not a pure nutriment, but is mixed with poisonous substances, excrementi…"

— John Harvey Kellogg

Medicine1852–1943

#life

"At the end of the current five-year presidential term and the “Trente-Six Dispendieuses” far-reaching public expenditure reforms will be required. These will be all the more painful as they are far to…"

— Éric Pichet

Economics1960

#life

"Lecture on Korzybski's Lifelong Influence on William S Burroughs"

— Alfred Korzybski

Mathematics1879–1950

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"What calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humil…"

— Georg Brandes

Literature1842–1927

#life