Antifragility Quotes

#1. And we can almost always detect antifragility (and fragility) using a simple test of asymmetry: anything that has more upside than downside from random events (or certain shocks) is antifragile; the reverse is fragile.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#2. Philosophers talk about truth and falsehood. People in life talk about payoff, exposure, and consequences (risks and rewards), hence fragility and antifragility. And sometimes philosophers and thinkers and those who study conflate Truth with risks and rewards.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#3. Seneca's version of that Stoicism is antifragility from fate. No downside from Lady Fortuna, plenty of upside.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#4. Technology is the result of antifragility, exploited by risk-takers in the form of tinkering and trial and error, with nerd-driven design confined to the backstage.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#5. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#6. The worst problem of modernity lies in the malignant transfer of fragility and antifragility from one party to the other, with one getting the benefits, the other (unwittingly) getting the harm, with such transfer facilitated by the growing wedge between the ethical and the legal.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#7. Let me be more aggressive: we are largely better at doing than we are at thinking, thanks to antifragility. I'd rather be dumb and antifragile than extremely smart and fragile, any time.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#8. The hidden benefit of antifragility is that you can guess worse than random and still end up outperforming.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#9. However stupid a fool's words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man.

Nikolai Gogol

#10. When I was a kid, we always had big gardens, acres of stuff we grew out in the yard.

Randy Houser

#11. Half smiling, with imperturbable brightness and friendliness, the Buddha looked steadily at the stranger and dismissed him with a hardly visible gesture. 'You are clever, O Samana,' said the Illustrious One, 'you know how to speak cleverly, my friend. Be on your guard against too much cleverness.

Hermann Hesse

#12. It seemed to her that while people were very happy, individual persons were surely damned. So, she shrank from that specious mystery the individual throws about himself, from Anna's smiles, from Lilian's tomorrows, from the shut-in room, the turned-in heart.

Elizabeth Bowen

#13. I never liked the idea of doing what a machine says. I hate having to salute something built in a factory.

Philip K. Dick

#14. Discouragement is contagious and is easily transmitted to others.

Max Anders

#15. Your eyes,' Asha grunted as he looked at him briefly. 'Turn them off.' He clicked his fingers and Blitzen's eyes blinked and when they opened only the whites of his eyes were visible, all he could see was darkness.

Keisha Keenleyside

#16. Rockabye Baby, in the treetop Dont you know a treetop is no safe place to rock? And who put you up there, and your cradle too? Baby, I think someone down here has got it in for you!

Shel Silverstein

#17. Mmm, carry me."
I laughed, reaching for my sweatpants. "I carry girls, boys, and women, not fully grown capable men."
"Slacker." He grinned, shoving me.

Shaye Evans

#18. Let us be bold enough and free enough to follow the great examples - the men of good will and honor who put aside little ways and petty hatreds to build the American dream.

Stephen Vincent Benet

#19. And what is the primary datum? It's the felt presence of immediate experience. In other words, being here now is the primary datum.

Terence McKenna

#20. The biggest fool is the one who thinks he knows it all.

Piers Anthony