Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Our world is dominated by the extreme, the unknown, and the very improbable(improbable according to our current knowledge)—and all the while we spend our time engaged in small talk, focusing on the known, and the repeated.

Economic, financial, and political predictors . . . are quite ashamed to say anything outlandish to their clients—and yet events, it turns out, are almost always outlandish .