Nassim Taleb on Excellence Quotes

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

"Standardization is the enemy of excellence."

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

"Courage is the only virtue you cannot fake."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ergodicity is the ultimate filter for excellence."

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

"Difficulty is what wakes up the genius."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"True excellence is the absence of fragility."

"The person you are the most afraid to contradict is yourself."

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

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

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

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

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

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