Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Random House, 2012)

Their wordsSome things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty.

Their wordsAntifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.

Their wordsLikewise with randomness, uncertainty, chaos: you want to use them, not hide from them.

Their wordsThe antifragile loves randomness and uncertainty, which also means—crucially—a love of errors, a certain class of errors.

Their wordsIf you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.

Their wordsIt is far easier to figure out if something is fragile than to predict the occurrence of an event that may harm it.

Their wordsThe best way to verify that you are alive is by checking if you like variations.

Their wordsNever ask anyone for their opinion, forecast, or recommendation. Just ask them what they have—or don’t have—in their portfolio.

Their wordsRedundancy is ambiguous because it seems like a waste if nothing unusual happens.

Their wordsLayers of redundancy are the central risk management property of natural systems.

Their wordsI want to live happily in a world I don’t understand.

Their wordswe are largely better at doing than we are at thinking, thanks to antifragility.

Their wordsdepriving systems of stressors, vital stressors, is not necessarily a good thing, and can be downright harmful.

Their wordsWe have been fragilizing the economy, our health, political life, education, almost everything