A Quote by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic. — © Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.
It is said that history turns on small hinges. A human career, too, results from an accumulating series of decisions about large and small matters over a period of years. But the catch is that you can never know when a seemingly small decision may prove to be, from the vantage of later years, the big decision of your life.
We must be sceptical even of our scepticism.
From building a fire one can learn something about artistic composition. If you use only small kindling and large logs, the fire will quickly eat up the small pieces but will not become strong enough to attack the large ones. You must supply a scale of sizes from the smallest to the largest. The human eye also will not make its way into a painting or building unless a continuum of shapes leads from the small to the large, from the large to the small.
Do not be afraid of large patterns, if properly designed they are more restful to the eye than small ones: on the whole, a pattern where the structure is large and the details much broken up is the most useful...very small rooms, as well as very large ones, look better ornamented with large patterns.
Never trust anyone who has no doubts. And I'm not talking about scepticism either: scepticism can be a healthy thing. You can have an argument with someone who's a sceptic. When I say 'cynic', I mean someone who has given up, and they want you to give up too, so it makes them feel better about themselves.
Clothing sizes are weird, they go: small, medium, large and then extra large, extra extra large, extra extra extra large. Something happened at large, they just gave up. They were like, 'I'm not doing any more adjectives; you just keep putting extras on there.' We could do better than that: small, medium, large, whoa, easy, slow down, stop it, interesting, American.
To love another another human in all of her splendor and imperfect perfection , it is a magnificent task...tremendous and foolish and human.
Let's be honest. There's not a business anywhere that is without problems. Business is complicated and imperfect. Every business everywhere is staffed with imperfect human beings and exists by providing a product or service to other imperfect human beings.
In matters large and small, many people seemed concerned about churlishness, an ugliness in our relationships that appears to be increasing rather than decreasing.
One of the biggest challenges for me is that I'm still a human being. I'm a very imperfect human being. I'm very open about the fact that I'm not trying to pretend to be better than anyone else.
In the small matters trust the mind, in the large ones the heart.
There is a case for saying that the creation of new aesthetic forms has been the most fundamentally productive of all forms of human activity. Whoever creates new artistic conventions has found methods of interchange between people about matters which were incommunicable before. The capacity to do this has been the basis of the whole of human history.
Weaknesses are part of human nature. What matters are the consequences they can have on a squad.
The spirit in the body is like wine in a glass; when it spills, it seeps into air and earth and light….It’s a mistake to think it’s the small things we control and not the large, it’s the other way around! We can’t stop the small accident, the tiny detail that conspires into fate: the extra moment you run back for something forgotten, a moment that saves you from an accident – or causes one. But we can assert the largest order, the large human values daily, the only order large enough to see.
Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
Public policy is a study in imperfection. It involves imperfect people, with imperfect information, facing deeply imperfect choices - so it's not surprising that they're getting imperfect results.
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