“Sometimes Plan B can have the same desired outcome, but a different path for getting there.”

Rule of thumb: Be skeptical of things you learned before you could read. E.g., religion.

I’ve always loved to write, and I kept a diary of what I thought about my business, being an entrepreneur and other things of interest to me.

Taking on short term risk can involve switching jobs, joining new groups / associations in the area, launching a personal blog, running an experiment within your existing job. These are some practical ways to inject volatility into your life, and thus some risk.

I’m skeptical of passive learning. If you don’t write down what you’re hearing and learning, what the odds you remember it?

If frequency with which you cite an education credential does not decrease over the course of your life, you’re not accomplishing very much.

Expose yourself to as much randomness as possible.

I to the We means that both the individual’s effort and the power of the network matter, and they work in tandem. Someone with no skill won’t get very far, no matter how strong the network.

I have a broad range of interests, so I’ll always be working on something.

Long-term goals are dangerous. They limit you. They hinder you from reacting to new conditions.

Expose yourself to as much as possible. Attend conferences no one else is attending. Read books no one else is reading. Talk to people no one else is talking to.

Sometimes I have to pause to make the distinction between Ben the teenager and Ben the businessman.

I’m just the smallest dot in a big map of human history.

I really focused on three things in high school – my company, basketball and my school work.

I don’t want to be normal. I want to be something else.

I suspect the debate over the ethics will be much more heated than the debate over steroids in baseball or any other sport, where the use is limited to a select group of freakish athletes.

Similarly, someone with lots of skill but a weak network won’t realize his or her fullest potential. So, you need both.

I can’t say I’m thankful about being German because I sometimes experience it as a huge burden. But it is an integral part of me and I wouldn’t want to escape it. I have accepted it.

I sometimes compare press officers to riflemen on the Somme — mowing down wave upon wave of distortion, taking out rank upon rank of supposition, deduction and gossip.

Sometimes you are in sync with the times, sometimes you are in advance, sometimes you are late.

Listening makes us open to Christ, the Word of God, spoken in all things: in the material world, the Scriptures, the Church, and sacraments and, sometimes most threateningly, in our fellow human beings.

Sometimes a clearly defined error is the only way to discover the truth

I’m not from a particularly sci-fi background. I’m not anti sci-fi at all, but I’ve never been known as a sci-fi writer and, suddenly, I was creating a flagship BBC sci-fi show, which is terrifying sometimes.

I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.

I wondered about the science of storms and how sometimes it seemed that a storm wanted to break the world and how the world refused to break.