Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder Quotes.

1. "Further, my characterization of a loser is someone who, after making a mistake, doesn’t introspect, doesn’t exploit it, feels embarrassed and defensive rather than enriched with a new piece of information, and tries to explain why he made the mistake rather than moving on. These types often consider themselves the victims of some large plot, a bad boss, or bad weather. Finally, a thought. He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once. And someone who has made plenty of errors—though never the same error more than once—is more reliable than someone who has never made any."
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder

2. "Abundance is harder for us to handle than scarcity."
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder

3. "The best way to verify that you are alive is by checking if you like variations. Remember that food would not have a taste if it weren’t for hunger; results are meaningless without effort, joy without sadness, convictions without uncertainty, and an ethical life isn’t so when stripped of personal risks."
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder

4. "Never ask anyone for their opinion, forecast, or recommendation. Just ask them what they have—or don’t have—in their portfolio."
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder

5. "Avoidance of boredom is the only worthy mode of action. Life otherwise is not worth living.)"
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder

6. "Never listen to a leftist who does not give away his fortune or does not live the exact lifestyle he wants others to follow. What the French call the caviar left, la gauche caviar, or what Anglo-Saxons call champagne socialists, are people who advocate socialism, sometimes even communism, or some political system with sumptuary limitations, while overtly leading a lavish lifestyle, often financed by inheritance—not realizing the contradiction that they want others to avoid just such a lifestyle. It is not too different from the womanizing popes, such as John XII, or the Borgias. The contradiction can exceed the ludicrous as with French president François Mitterrand of France who, coming in on a socialist platform, emulated the pomp of French monarchs. Even more ironic, his traditional archenemy, the conservative General de Gaulle, led a life of old-style austerity and had his wife sew his socks."
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder

7. "be. So I follow the Lindy effect as a guide in selecting what to read: books that have been around for ten years will be around for ten more; books that have been around for two millennia should be around for quite a bit of time, and so forth."
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder

8. "In an antique city-state, or a modern municipality, shame is the penalty for the violation of ethics—making things more symmetric. Banishment and exile, or, worse, ostracism were severe penalties—people did not move around voluntarily and considered uprooting a horrible calamity. In larger organisms like the mega holy nation-state, with a smaller role for face-to-face encounters, and social roots, shame ceases to fulfill its duty of disciplinarian."
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder

9. "Curiosity is antifragile, like an addiction, and is magnified by attempts to satisfy it—books have a secret mission and ability to multiply, as everyone who has wall-to-wall bookshelves knows well."
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder

10. "We ingest probiotics because we don’t eat enough dirt anymore."
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder