"The confirmation bias is the mother of all misconceptions. It is the tendency to interpret new information so that it becomes compatible with our existing theories, beliefs and convictions."
- 'The art of thinking clearly', Rolf Dobelli
"Seeing small pieces of a larger jigsaw puzzle in isolation, no matter how hi-def the picture, is insufficient to grapple with humanity’s greatest challenges."
- 'Range', David Epstein
"What should a city optimize for?, How should we measure the effectiveness of a city (what are its KPIs)?,... How can we make sure a city is constantly evolving and always open to change?"
- In YC Blog.
"Human cultures have blind spots. We have no vocabulary to describe paradigm changes in the largest boundaries of life, especially those happening around us."
- 'The Sovereign Individual', James Dale Davidson, Lord William Rees-Mogg
"The smallest possible network that is stable and can grow on its own. For example, Zoom's videoconferencing network can work with just two people, whereas Airbnb's requires hundreds of active rental listings in a market to become stable."
- 'Cold Start Problem', Andrew Chen
"Farming also extended the horizon over which humans had to solve problems. Hunting bands lived within an immediate time horizon."
- 'The Sovereign Individual', James Dale Davidson, Lord William Rees-Mogg
“Tech gives us an Illusion of Intimacy”.
- Sam Esmail
"We eternally inhabit order, surrounded by chaos. We eternally occupy known territory, surrounded by the unknown."
- '12 Rules for Life', Jordan B. Peterson
"More than anything else, competition is just an ideology-the ideology-that pervades our society and distorts our thinking."
- Peter Thiel
"Startups operate on the principle that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can."
- Peter Thiel
"The bold move is the right move except when it’s the wrong move."
- David Petraeus
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
- William Bruce (or) Albert Einstein
“I write jokes for a living, I sit at my hotel at night, I think of something that's funny, then I go get a pen and I write it down. Or if the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny.”
- Mitch Hedberg
"A rational leader suggests changing course to avoid a storm. An irrational one can change the weather."
- 'Alchemy', Rory Sutherland
"Coming back to America was, for me, much more of a cultural shock than going to India. The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than any intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work."
- Steve Jobs (Biography by Walter Isaacson)
"Some criticism is priceless. It comes from someone who understands the genre and has seen the dynamics at play. It is delivered by someone who feels the fear (for themselves and for you) but decides to show up regardless."
- Seth Godin
"All too often, what matters is not whether an idea is true or effective, but whether it fits with the preconceptions of a dominant cabal."
- 'Alchemy', Rory Sutherland
"Let us conjecture that the formation of moral values in society doesn’t come from the evolution of the consensus. No, it is the most intolerant person who imposes virtue on others precisely because of that intolerance. The same can apply to civil rights."
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“In the Tao of sailing, the balance point is not static; it’s a dynamic equilibrium.”
- 'The Untethered Soul', Michael A. Singer
"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
- Blaise Pascal
"People who can't laugh at themselves will always be outwitted by people who can."
- T. K. Coleman
"Reality is neutral. Our reactions reflect back and create our world.
Judge, and feel separate and lonely. Anger, and lose peace of mind. Cling, and live in anxiety. Fantasize, and miss the present. Desire, and suffer until you have it.
Heaven and hell are right here, right now."
- Naval Ravikant
“The trouble with market research is that people don't think what they feel, they don't say what they think and they don't do what they say.”
- David Ogilvy
“The maps of the world drawn by the medieval cartographers were so hopelessly inaccurate, so filled with factual error, that they elicit condescending smiles today when almost the entire surface of the earth has been charted.”
- ‘Future Shock', Alvin Toffler
I had, also, during many years, followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from memory than favorable ones.
- Charles Darwin
“Science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
- Isaac Asimov
"...and information market, that we have constructed a model which basically says, exciting news for free in exchange for your attention."
- Yuval Noah Harari
"When they examine the actual content of counterfactual thinking, researchers find that individuals tend to focus on aspects of a situation that are under their control. When asked to imagine an automobile accident that involves someone who is speeding while driving on a rainy day with poor visibility, respondents are much more likely to “undo” the accident by having the driver be more cautious than by having the day be clear and dry."
- 'The Paradox of Choice', Barry Schwartz
"No tool is omnicompetent. There is no such thing as a master-key that will unlock all doors."
- Arnold Toynbee
"One heuristic for distinguishing stuff that matters is to ask yourself whether you'll care about it in the future. Fake stuff that matters usually has a sharp peak of seeming to matter. That's how it tricks you. The area under the curve is small, but it’s shape jabs into your consciousness like a pin."
- Paul Graham
"If previously, if traditionally people built identities like stone houses with very deep foundations, now it makes more sense to build identities like tents that you can fold and move elsewhere."
- Yuval Noah Harari
"Perfect closes the door. It asserts that we're done, that this is the best we can do.
Worse, perfect forbids us to try. To seek perfection and not reach it is a failure."
- 'This is Marketing', Seth Godin
"A man has many social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose opinion he cares. He generally shows a different side of himself to each of these different groups."
- William James
"One of the keys to coolness is to avoid situations where inexperience may make you look foolish. If you want to find surprises you should do the opposite."
- Paul Graham