enlightening quotes from the book:the bed of procrustes- philosophical and practical aphorisms by:...

8/16/2019 Enlightening Quotes From The Book:The Bed of Procrustes- Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms By: NassimNicholas Taleb

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Enlightening Quotes From The Book:

The Bed of Procrustes-Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

By: Nassim Nicholas TalebSelected by: Anjad Qusaibaty

18/3/2015


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About The Author…

NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB is a Lebanese-American essayist,scholar, statistician, and risk analyst, whose work focuses onproblems of randomness, probability, and uncertainty.

He is currently Distinguished Professor at New YorkUniversity.

He is the author of several books.

His most renowned book The Black Swan , has spent morethan a year on the New York Times bestseller list and wasdescribed in a review by the Sunday Times as one of thetwelve most influential books since World War II, and hasbecome an intellectual, social, and cultural touchstone.


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About The Book…

The Bed of Procrustes is a standalone book in NassimNicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, aninvestigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability,human error, risk, and decision-making in a world wedon’t understand. The other books in the series are

Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, and Antifragile.(Source: goodreads)


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N t th q t


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“ Knowledge is subtractive, not

additive-what we subtract(reduction by what does notwork, what not to do), not

what we add (what to do)! ”

The Bed of Procrustes- Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms: Nassim Nicholas Taleb


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“ An erudite is someone whodisplays less than he knows; a journalist or consultant, the

opposite. ”



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“ It is harder to say NOwhen you really mean it

than when you don't. ”



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“ Hatred is love with a typosomewhere in the computercode, correctable but very

hard to find. ”



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“ It is difficult to stop the

impulse to reveal secrets inconversation, as if informationhad the desire to live and the

power to multiply. ”



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“ You can tell howuninteresting a person isby asking him whom he

finds interesting.”



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“ Don't complain too loudabout wrongs done you; youmay give ideas to your less

imaginative enemies. ”



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“ Finer men tolerate others'

small inconsistencies thoughnot the large ones; the weaktolerate others' large

inconsistencies though notsmall ones. ”



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“ For the robust, an error isinformation; for the fragile,

an error is an error. ”



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“ The tragedy is that much ofwhat you think is random is inyour control and, what's worse,

the opposite.”



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“ Robust is when you care more about

the few who like your work than themultitude who dislike it (artists); fragile

when you care more about the few whodislike your work than the multitude who

like it (politicians).”



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“ Most info-Web media- newspaper typeshave a hard time swallowing the idea thatknowledge is reached (mostly) by removing

junk from people's heads. ”



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“ Asking science to explain life and vitalmatters is equivalent to asking a grammarian

to explain poetry. ”



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“ Pharmaceutical companiesare better at inventing diseases

that match existing drugs,rather than inventing drugs to

match existing diseases.”



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“ Usually, what we call a ‘ goodlistener ’ is someone with

skillfully polished

indifference.”



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“ The three most harmful addictionsare heroin, carbohydrates, and a

monthly salary. ”



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“ I suspect that they put Socrates to deathbecause there is something terriblyunattractive, alienating, and nonhuman in

thinking with too much clarity. ”



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“ How superb to become wisewithout being boring; how sad to

be boring without being wise ”


*In the picture: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian novelist and Nobel prize winner.


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