People don't mind being in prison as long as no one else is free. But stage a jailbreak, and everybody else freaks out.

Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people's ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas. In short, thinking for yourself.

As some people say, we're already in a Singularity relative to ancient Grecians, inasmuch as they couldn't understand our world at all... and I think it's true in the opposite direction, too.

We proceed by doubt, by trial and error, by resisting the impulse to lunge after certainty.

If you're oblivious to other people, chances are pretty good that you're going to hurt them.

But it is not the job of truth to make us feel good. It is the job of truth to be true, and it is our job to deal with it.

Posting information is like pornography, a slick, impersonal exhibition.

Autonomy, adventure, imagination: entrepreneurshi p comprehends all this and more for us. The characteristic art form of our age may be the business plan.

Life, if you live it right, keeps surprising you, and the thing that keeps surprising you the most…is yourself

If you want others to follow, learn to be alone with your thoughts.

Hence the vogue for double majors. It isn’t enough anymore to take a bunch of electives in addition to your primary focus, to roam freely across the academic fields, making serendipitous connections and discoveries, the way that American higher education was designed (uniquely, among the world’s systems) to allow you to do.

People’s stories are the most personal thing they have, and paying attention to those stories is just about the most important thing you can do for them.