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

If you really understand something, you can: 1) explain it using a clear metaphor and 2) explain the strongest counter-argument to the idea.

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.

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

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 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.

Learn to take losses quickly and cleanly. There is something about inside information which seems to paralyze a man’s reasoning powers.

With [Vladimir] Putin, he says he’s going to do something, he gets on it, does it.

Only way you can you get upset is when you expecting something.

If you’ve had a bumper crop, you don’t owe me triple tithes. And if you’ve had no crops at all, you don’t owe me no tithes. So there must be something inherently fair about it.

Somehow bowel wisdom got lost and it became something that no one wanted to talk about anymore.

When they do something stupid, they don’t do it again. And when they do something that works a little bit, they do it even better and harder the next time.

Just making something up, something that’s not there, that suddenly is there.

When something isn’t done, you want to do something about it.