Best 11 quotes in «black swan quotes» category

She wasn’t the Black Swan’s puppet anymore. She was broken. All she had left was trust.

I covered the scar with concealer every day because I wanted my body to be a flawless figurine, but this blemish would be with me forever.

The trumpeter is beautiful to behold, graceful and elegant, just like our Ms. Swan. But if you disturb a trumpeter, trespass through its territory, or threaten its nest, it will hiss like a cobra and attack with the viciousness of a wolf. That is the black swan side.

Ideas come and go, stories stay.

HISTORY AND THE TRIPLET OF OPACITY History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, the generator of history. There is a fundamental incompleteness in your grasp of such events, since you do not see what's inside the box, how the mechanisms work. What I call the generator of historical events is different from the events themselves, much as the minds of the gods cannot be read just by witnessing their deeds. You are very likely to be fooled about their intentions. This disconnect is similar to the difference between the food you see on the table at the restaurant and the process you can observe in the kitchen. (The last time I brunched at a certain Chinese restaurant on Canal Street in downtown Manhattan, I saw a rat coming out of the kitchen.) The human mind suffers from three ailments as it comes into contact with history, what I call the triplet of opacity. They are: a. the illusion of understanding, or how everyone thinks he knows what is going on in a world that is more complicated (or random) than they realize; b. the retrospective distortion, or how we can assess matters only after the fact, as if they were in a rearview mirror (history seems clearer and more organized in history books than in empirical reality); and c. the overvaluation of factual information and the handicap of authoritative and learned people, particularly when they create categories—when they "Platonify.

The Neverseen may think themselves brilliant schemers, full of plans no one would ever suspect. But when it came to game-changing secrets, the Black Swan would always be the best.

[...] what you see is likely to be less Black Swannish than what you do not see.

I have this really morbid, awesome love for the movie Black Swan.

Perfection is not just about control, it is also about letting go.

Remember that you are a Black Swan.

The only person standing in your way is you.