"A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation."

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

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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

"I believe in the time when we shall be able to create works of art in the Theatre without the use of the written play, without the use of actors."

— Edward Gordon Craig

Entertainment1872–1966

#art

"Sangam had many firsts. The first technicolour film, the first film to have two intervals — in a way I was a part of history."

— Vyjayanthimala

Entertainment1936

#art

"..every individual conflict must be silenced and that everyone join together in the name of the whole, that is for our modern German art."

— Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Art1880–1938

#art

"The following pictures are those which to the author seem the strangest. Without doubt they have their origin in Michelangelo Rome series of the main section that was sung with the loudest and most pe…"

— Charlotte Salomon

Art1917–1943

#writing