I don't go to the doctor except when I'm very ill, and when I go to India, I drink a drop of local water.
From Nassim Nicholas Taleb
People have the problem of denial. This is one of the things I learned in Lebanon. Everybody who left Beirut when the war started, including my parents, said, 'Oh, its temporary.' It lasted 17 years! People tend to underestimate the gravity of these situations. That's how they work.
We are victims of the post-Enlightenment view that the world functions like a sophisticated machine, to be understood like a textbook engineering problem and run by wonks. In other words, like a home appliance, not like the human body.
Poverty is clearly one source of emotional suffering, but there are others, like loneliness.
You will get the most attention from those who hate you. No friend, no admirer and no partner will flatter you with as much curiosity.
The next time you experience a blackout, take some solace by looking at the sky. You will not recognize it.
The grandchildren should not bear the debts of the grandparents.
Years ago, I noticed one thing about economics, and that is that economists didn't get anything right.
Globalization has created this interlocking fragility. At no time in the history of the universe has the cancellation of a Christmas order in New York meant layoffs in China.
Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that. The Titanic saved lives because we're building bigger and bigger ships. So these people died, but we have effectively improved the safety of the system, and nothing failed in vain.
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