Marwan Elnakeeb

“No muscles without strength, friendship without trust, opinion without consequence, change without aesthetics, age without values, life without effort, water without thirst, food without nourishment, love without sacrifice, power without fairness, facts without rigor, statistics without logic, mathematics without proof, teaching without experience, politeness without warmth, values without embodiment, degrees without erudition, militarism without fortitude, progress without civilization, friendship without investment, virtue without risk, probability without ergodicity, wealth without exposure, complication without depth, fluency without content, decision without asymmetry, science without skepticism, religion without tolerance, and, most of all: nothing without skin in the game.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“What matters isn't what a person has or doesn't have; it is what he or she is afraid of losing.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“Being reviewed or assessed by others matters if and only if one is subjected to the judgment of future—not just present—others. And recall that, a free person does not need to win arguments—just win.*2”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“Consider a more extreme example than the casino experiment. Assume a collection of people play Russian roulette a single time for a million dollars—this is the central story in Fooled by Randomness. About five out of six will make money. If someone used a standard cost-benefit analysis, he would have claimed that one has an 83.33 percent chance of gains, for an “expected” average return per shot of $833,333. But if you keep playing Russian roulette, you will end up in the cemetery. Your expected return is … not computable.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life