Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Time

"People used to wear ordinary clothes weekdays, and formal attire on Sunday. Today it is the exact reverse."

"The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today’s employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss."

"I reject a sole time series of the past as an indication of future performance; I need a lot more than data."

"If I could predict what my day would exactly look like, I would feel a little bit dead."

"What fools call “wasting time” is most often the best investment."

"Randomness works well in search—sometimes better than humans."

"Read nothing from the past one hundred years; eat no fruits from the past one thousand years; drink nothing from the past four thousand years ; but talk to no ordinary man over forty."

"A... vicious effect of... is that those that are good at predicting the past... think of themselves as good at predicting the future... e live in a world where important events are not predictable..."

"It is remarkable how fast and how effectively you can construct a nationality with a flag, a few speeches, and a national anthem; to this day I avoid the label "Lebanese," preferring the less restrictive "Levantine" designation."

"I... found a significant advantage in selecting aged traders, using as a selection criterion their cumulative years of experience rather than their absolute success... lder people have been exposed longer to the rare event and can be, convincingly, more resistant to it."

"Maximizing the probability of winning does not lead to maximizing the expectation from the game when one's strategy may include, i.e., a small chance of a large loss and a large chance of a small win. If you engaged in a Russian Roulette-type strategy... you are likely to show up as the winner in almost all samples—except in the year when you are dead."