Nassim Taleb on Excellence Quotes

"My only measure of success is how much time you have to kill."

"If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud."

"A man is honorable in proportion to the personal risks he takes for his opinion."

"Excellence is the ability to do things without being forced to."

"If you don't take risks for your opinion, you are nothing."

"A professional is someone who is paid for his performance, not for his presence."

"You are only truly free when you can say 'no' to a prestigious invitation."

"Success is becoming a self-owned person. The rest is just paperwork."

"Intellectual honesty is the only path to real excellence."

"The best way to learn is to have skin in the game."

"Knowledge is reached by any process that is not a bureaucratic one."

"The difference between a worker and a master is that the master does not follow a manual."

"Character is the only thing we carry with us that is not subject to the randomness of the world."

"True excellence is the absence of fragility."

"Don't ask people for their opinion, forecast or recommendation. Just ask them what they have in their portfolio."

"The best way to verify if you are alive is by checking if you like variations."

"You want to be the person who is the least fragile, not the one who is the most efficient."

"Wisdom is not about what you know, but how you act in the face of what you don't know."

"The mark of a charlatan is that he focuses on the data that confirms his hypothesis."

"Ergodicity is the ultimate filter for excellence."

"You cannot be a master if you are afraid of being a fool."

"The most important aspect of a job is whether you can do it with your head held high."

"Real life is not a classroom; excellence requires practical tinkering."

"Avoid being a fragilista—someone who thinks they can predict the unpredictable."

"The Lindy Effect ensures that only the truly excellent survives the test of time."

"To be excellent is to have a soul in the game."

"Mastery is the intersection of curiosity and skin in the game."

"Standardization is the enemy of excellence."

"The greatest deception is the illusion of control; excellence is managing what you can't control."

"True growth comes from the stressors that don't kill you."

"Excellence is not a skill, it is a refusal to be mediocre."

"The quality of your work is measured by its resistance to noise."

"Courage is the only virtue you cannot fake."