Nassim Nicholas Taleb, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbably,” Random House, 2010.

“You cannot predict how people will act. Except, of course, if there is a trick, and that trick is the cord on which neoclassical economics is suspended.” (p. 184)

“In practice, randomness is fundamentally incomplete information.” (p. 198)

“We cannot teach people to withhold judgment; judgments are embedded in the way we view objects. I do not see a ‘tree’; I see a pleasant or an ugly tree.” (p. 202)

“…it is contagion that determines the fate of a theory in social science, not its validity.” (p. 277)

“I am most often irritated by those who attack the bishop but somehow fall for the securities analyst – those who exercise their skepticism against religion but not against economists, social scientists, and phony statisticians. Using the confirmation bias these people will tell you that religion was horrible for mankind by counting deaths from the Inquisition and various religious wars. But they will not show you how many people were killed by nationalism, social science, and political theory under Stalinism or during the Vietnam War.” (p. 291)