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“ ”Authors, artists, and even philosophers are much better off having a very small number of fanatics behind them than a large number of people who appreciate their work. The number of persons who dislike the work don’t count — there is no such thing as the opposite of buying your book, or the equivalent of losing points in a soccer game, and this absence of negative domain for book sales provides the author with a measure of optionality.
About Nassim Taleb
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (born 1 January 1960 in Amioun, Lebanon) is an essayist, epistemologist, researcher, and former practitioner of mathematical finance.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Shorter versions of this quote
Authors, artists, and even philosophers are much better off having a very small number of fanatics behind them than a large number of people who appreciate their work. The number of persons who dislike the work don’t count — there is no such thing as the opposite of buying your book,
Additional quotes by Nassim Taleb
What matters isn't what a person has or doesn't have; it is what he or she is afraid of losing.
Do not pay attention to what people say, only to what they do, and how much of their necks they are putting on the line.
Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost. Patrocles does not strike us as a hero because of his accomplishments (he was rapidly killed) but because he preferred to die than see Achilles sulking into inaction. Clearly, the epic poets understood invisible histories. Also later thinkers and poets had more elaborate methods for dealing with randomness, as we will see with stoicism.