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

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 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.

In 1980 I finished three or four times in seventh place.

I do very well three things: my job, stupidities and children.

One of the hardest things I’ve had to deal with in my career is keeping my material topical even though I only release albums every three or four years.

What’s your brand? If you can’t answer that question about your own brand in two or three words, your brand’s in trouble.

I was the oldest of six, and three of my siblings were adopted.

I’ve never been part of anything so great as those three kids.

I didn’t think I was going to have to do three, but the idiot kept getting reelected.

He is making all of the white people scared only 3 out of 10 people really believe all the stuff that is being said by him.