“The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have ! How many of these books have you read?” and the others – a very small minority – who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you don’t know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menancingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“The problem with experts is that they do not know what they do not know.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“The Black Swan asymmetry allows you to be confident about what is wrong, not about what you believe is right.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“I know that history is going to be dominated by an improbable event, I just don’t know what that event will be.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
