All that exists is this moment; it’s all there is. There is no future. That’s a fiction in your head that… nobody can predict the future. There is no past; nobody’s gone back even an inch in their past, not even a second, so that doesn’t exist.

Literally all that exists is this moment. I feel like you’re dying and being reborn at every moment. It’s just, it’s up to you to choose whether to forget it or to remember it.

We feel guilt when we no longer want to associate with old friends and colleagues who haven’t changed. The price, and marker, of growth.

The reality is you’ve been dead for the history of the universe, it’s 10 billion years or more. You will be dead for the next 70 billion years or so until the heat death of universe.

Anything you do will fade. It will disappear, just like the human race will disappear and the planet will disappear. Get to Mars, even that group will disappear. No one is going to remember you past a certain number of generations, whether you’re an artist or a poet or a conqueror or a pauper or nothing. There’s no meaning.

My biggest fear is that I’m going to die without having really lived. I think everybody has that fear at some core level.

Everyone that ends up becoming an extreme winner in society starts off as a loser. 

I don’t know if this generation is the last mortal generation, or the last one before we blow ourselves up.

We are evolved for frequent, visible, small wins and to ignore the infrequent, hidden, catastrophic risks.

Large groups are no place for smart people.

You can have the mind or you can have the moment.

A busy mind can often rob you of peace of mind. The peace that we seek is not peace of mind, it’s peace from mind.

You want to rest your mind. You want to learn how to settle into your mind. Now, I look forward to solitary confinement. You leave me alone for a day, it will be the happiest day I’ve had in awhile. That is a superpower that I think everybody can attain.

What I find is that 90 percent of thoughts that I have are fear. 90 percent are fear based. The other 10 percent are probably desire based.

You have to get out of that relative mindset because if you get into that relative mindset, you’re always going to hate people who do better than you, you’re always going to be jealous, you’re going to be envious of them.

The fewer desires I can have, the more I can accept the current state of things, the less my mind is moving because the mind really exists in motion towards the future or the past.

Everything is perfect exactly the way it is. It is only in our particular minds that we’re unhappy or not happy and things are perfect or imperfect because of what we desire.

The advantage of meditation is not that you’re suddenly going to gain the superpower to control your internal state, it’s that you will recognize just how out of control your mind is.

On the mind: It is like a monkey flinging feces, that’s running around the room, making trouble, shouting, breaking things. It’s completely uncontrollable. It’s an out-of-control mad person.

You have to see this mad creature in operation before you feel a certain distaste towards it and you start separating yourself from it. In that separation is liberation.

I think the number one thing that clouds us from being able to see reality is that we have preconceived notions of the way it should be.

A busy mind accelerates the perceived passage of time. Buy more time by cultivating peace of mind.

If you want to be effective in business, you need a clear, calm, cool, and collected mind.

A clear mind, leads to better judgement, leads to better outcome.

Most of life is a search for who and what needs you the most.

You have one life. You’re dead for tens of billions of years, and you’re going to be dead for tens of billions of years.

The reality is life is a single-player game. You’re born alone. You’re going to die alone. All of your interpretations are alone. All your memories are alone. You’re gone in three generations and nobody cares. Before you showed up, nobody cared. It’s all single-player.

If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day.

All the real benefits in life come from compound interest.

Slow down, life is long.

Live below your means for freedom.

Ruthlessly cut meetings out of your life.

Relax you’ll live longer and perform better.

Live the life you want other people to live.

All the great endeavors in life are creative.

We all get shaped by adversity. All the great things that have happened to me in my life that I consider highly positive… they all started with something highly negative.

The flavor of life is on the edge. 

You have to do hard things to create your own meaning in life.

The three big ones in life are wealth, health, and happiness. We pursue them in that order but their importance is in the reverse.

My number one priority in life, above my happiness, above my family, above my work, is my own health. It starts with my physical health. Second, it’s my mental health. Third, it’s my spiritual health. Then it’s my family’s health

On what is the purpose of life: To keep growing and learning in the short period of time that you have. To seek truth and to accept things the way they are. To see the world the way it really is. Then, just to live your life. I think that’s it. Any deeper meanings or goals just lead to ideologies, which lead to desires, and belief systems, and disappointments and conflict.

If you look back at your life on your deathbed at all the interesting things you’ve done, they’re all going to be centered around the sacrifices you’ve made and the hard things that you did.

We are overexposed to everything. The way to survive in modern society is to be an ascetic, it is to retreat from society. There’s too much society everywhere you go. You have society in your phone, society in your pocket, society in your ears… It’s socializing you and programming everyone. The only solution is turn it off.

Humans are basically habit machines […] I think learning how to break habits is actually a very important meta skill and can serve you in life almost better than anything else.

When building habits, choose consistency over content. The best book is the one you can’t put down. The best exercise is the one you enjoy doing every day. The best health food is the one you find tasty. The best work is the work you’d do for free.

Don’t do things that you know are morally wrong. Not because someone is watching, but because you are. Self-esteem is just the reputation that you have with yourself.

When looking for a purpose to life, notice that most things are stepping stones, done for ulterior motives. True art, love, and play stand apart, as they are done for their own sakes.

The more you judge people and things, the more you’re going to separate yourself. You’ll feel good for an instant… but then you’re gonna feel lonely and then you’re just going to see negativity everywhere. The world just reflects your own feelings back at you.

All humans are meant to do something different every day. The idea that we repeat ourselves and we specialize and we pigeon hole ourselves is a modern invention created through specialization of labor in the industrial revolution.

A great goal in life would be to not have to be in a given place at a given time… Being accountable for your output rather than your input. I would love to be paid purely for my judgment.