Taleb and Hume

"It does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear."

"A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point."

"History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, [...] The generator of historical events is different from the events themselves, much as the minds of the gods cannot be read just by witnessing their deeds."

David Hume: "No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion."

"And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition." — Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)


"the only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other. " — Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)