Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Bureaucracy is a construction by which a person is conveniently separated from the consequences of his or her actions.

The curse of modernity is that we are increasingly populated by a class of people who are better at explaining than understanding, or better at explaining than doing.

You can tell how uninteresting a person is by asking him whom he finds interesting.

Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse.

Don't cross a river if it is four feet deep on average.

Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that's what you are seeking.

Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.

Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love.

The fastest way to become rich is to socialize with the poor; the fastest way to become poor is to socialize with the rich.

Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee.

Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous.

An ad hominem attack against an individual, not against an idea, is highly flattering. It indicates that the person does not have anything intelligent to say about your message.

Someone who says 'I am busy' is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you.

If you're busy at work odds are you will eventually be replaced by a robot.

Sophisticated minds adopt simplified lifestyles.

The good life is simple. Don't f*ck it up by making it complicated.

I like Mondays more than I like lazy Sundays. I live for this sh*t.

The characteristic feature of the loser is to bemoan, in general terms, mankind's flaws, biases, contradictions, and irrationality – without exploiting them for fun and profit.

Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.

Banks hire dull people and train them to be even more dull.