A Quote by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries, let alone revising their categories.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Quote Topics

Alone Becomes Boundaries Categories Categorizing Category Considering Definitive Humans Necessary Pathological People Preventing Revising Seen

Quote Author

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Lebanese - Scientist
Born: 1960

The sad thing about our society is that women are put in one of two categories. You're either in the beautiful category and you're seen as sexy and beautiful, or some version of that, or you're put into another category... The latter category affords women the opportunity to be smart, funny, independent, mean, strong, intelligent and opinionated. We take them seriously as politicians, if they fit into that latter category. We respect their opinions more and give them higher expectations. That latter category is what allows female actors to be characters.

Amber Heard

My audience is comprised of three categories. The first category contains the people who decide after the first five minutes that they've made a mistake and leave. The second category is the people who give the film a chance and leave annoyed after 40 minutes. The third category includes the people that watch the whole film and return to see it again. If I'm able to persuade 33% of the audience to stay, then I can say that I've succeeded.

Peter Greenaway

We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under . . . The fourth category, the rarest, is the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers.

Milan Kundera

There are two different categories of love. The first category is called a fairytale. The second category of love is called just another lesson

Taylor Swift

Gnomes live ten times faster than humans. They're harder to see than a high-speed mouse. That's one reason why most humans hardly ever see them. The other is that humans are very good at not seeing things they know aren't there. And, since sensible humans know that there are no such things as people four inches high, a gnome who doesn't want to be seen probably won't be seen... Wings.

Terry Pratchett

I do not think much of ages. People are people. What does it matter how old or young they are? It is a category, and I do not like categories. It is a sort of pigeonhole or a label.

Louis L'Amour

The First World became a popular phrase in about the 1970s and '80s. The World Bank then began categorizing countries in different categories, advanced to the least developed.

Lee Kuan Yew

I'm a member of the Recording Academy and I see the way it works and even with the whole voting process it's broken down into specific categories. There are Pop categories and Dance and Rock and Metal and Film and Score and everything else. Basically when you are voting you are urged not to vote in the category that you don't know anything about.

John Petrucci

. . . the membership relation for sets can often be replaced by the composition operation for functions. This leads to an alternative foundation for Mathematics upon categories -- specifically, on the category of all functions. Now much of Mathematics is dynamic, in that it deals with morphisms of an object into another object of the same kind. Such morphisms (like functions) form categories, and so the approach via categories fits well with the objective of organizing and understanding Mathematics. That, in truth, should be the goal of a proper philosophy of Mathematics.

Saunders Mac Lane

You watch an old 'Jeopardy!' and the categories alone are very plain. 'Poetry,' or 'Movies,' or 'Physics.' If you watch it now, though, there'll be a theme board where the categories are all Hitchcock movies. Lots more jokes, lots more high-concept categories and questions.

Ken Jennings

Humans create their own boundaries, their own limitations. We say what is humanly possible, and what is not possible. Then just because we believe it, it becomes truth for us.

Miguel Angel Ruiz

I'm aware that people enjoy creating categories that make it easier to digest pop culture or the media or entertainment or whatever. But I really have too much to do to fit into any easy category.

James Adomian

I don't like any category; categories are not my favorite subject. They're too confining.

Paul Horn

We need people pushing the boundaries. Exploration is what we, as humans, do.

Heidi Hammel

When people hear our record, they're not going to be able to put us into the 'New Metal' category or the 'pop-punk' category or the 'aggressive emo' category. I think people will be able to take it for what it is.