"There is no such thing as a failed soldier, dead or alive —likewise there is no such thing as a failed entrepreneur or failed scientific researcher ..."

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.”

“When conflicted between two choices, take neither.”

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

“Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Life is so much easier today than it was a hundred years ago. People used to have to work on farms from sun-up to sun-down, and still their children would die, and there often wouldn't be enough to ea…"

— John S. Hall

Literature1960

#life

"At first to prescription medication and then to pretty much everything. I’d had several years of being in control of my alcoholism. I was pretty reliable; I took care of business. And then when my per…"

— Chris Cornell

Music1964–2017

#life

"I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time......why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time, my greatest regret is how much I believed in the future."

— Jonathan Safran Foer

Literature1977

#life

"In the subjectivist view, when ‘reason’ is used to connote a thing or idea rather than an act, it refers exclusively to the relation of such an object or concept to a purpose, not to the object or con…"

— Max Horkheimer

Philosophy1895–1973

#philosophy