Personal Life
Though a non-smoker, Taleb suffered from throat cancer in the mid-1990s, which he overcame. He has stated that his major hobby is "teasing people who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously and those who don't have the guts to sometimes say: 'I don’t know ...'" Some reporters have commented that information about his personal life is difficult to extract, though Taleb appears to enjoy being in the limelight. Others find him more talkative: Malcolm Gladwell, in What the Dog Saw, wrote: "We would have lunches that would last for hours. The delight I took in his company was offset only by the dread I felt at the prospect of transcribing all those hours of tapes."
Read more about this topic: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Famous quotes containing the words personal life, personal and/or life:
“He hadn’t known me fifteen minutes, and yet he was ... ready to talk ... I was still to learn that Munshin, like many people from the capital, could talk openly about his personal life while remaining a dream of espionage in his business operations.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“The grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passionate rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island. In this cry of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their isolation in the face of a universe that wars on them with winds and seas.”
—J.M. (John Millington)
“We can conceive a thinking being to have either many or few perceptions. Suppose the mind to be reduced even below the life of an oyster. Suppose it to have only one perception, as of thirst or hunger. Consider it in that situation. Do you conceive any thing but merely that perception? Have you any notion of self or substance? If not, the addition of other perceptions can never give you that notion.”
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