The people who succeed are irrationally passionate about something

Whether in commerce, science, or politics, history remembers the artists.

To the experts, what looks like hard work from the outside, is play from the inside.

If you have an unswerving desire to do something, then usually you’ll get it.

If you want to operate at peak performance, you have to learn how to tame your mind.

Pick your one overwhelming desire. It’s okay to suffer over that one. But on all the other desires, let them go so you can be calm and peaceful and relaxed.

You’re better off following your genuine intellectual curiosity rather than chasing whatever is hot right now.

The most successful entrepreneurs are authentic to who they are and what they uniquely can do.

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

All of the really successful people I know have a really strong action bias. They just do things

All greatness comes from suffering.

If you want to see who rules over you, see who you’re not allowed to criticize.

Better motivated on the wrong thing than unmotivated on the right thing.

Picking the direction that you’re heading in in every decision is far, far more important than what force you apply. Just pick the right direction to start walking in, and then start walking.

The biggest mistake any performer can make is to look at the audience.

Your real resumé is a painful recounting of all of your struggles.

When it comes to medicine and nutrition, subtract before you add.

It’s a contradiction that we all deal with. That we all want to be successful people, but we also want to be happy people. The two of those run in almost diametric opposites to each other.

My definition of wisdom is knowing the long term consequences of your actions.

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

The people with the best judgment are among the least emotional.

Do everything you were going to do, but with less angst, less suffering, less emotion. Everything takes time.

I think almost everything about humans and human civilization is explained better by evolution than anything else.

I think it just helps to be very aware that fundamentally, there are no adults. Everyone is making it up as they go along. You have to find your own path, picking, choosing, taking and discarding as you see fit.

The best relationships are peer relationships. When given power over others, our ego justifies it by assuming we are smarter. Better to have people work with us than for us.

Think clearly from the ground up. Understand and explain from first principles. Ignore society and politics. Acknowledge what you have. Control your emotions.

Don’t return it, give it away. Don’t keep fixing it, create something new. Don’t force the relationship, find someone else.

If you want to be successful, surround yourself with people who are more successful than you are. If you want to be happy, surround yourself with people who are less successful.

Knowledge is discovered by all of us, each adding to the whole. Wisdom is rediscovered by each of us, one at a time.

My 50-year-old self is going to say chill out, relax, don’t stress so much, live in the moment. It will all be all right.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

You always have three options. You can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it.

You realize just how precious life is and how it’s important to make sure that you enjoy yourself, you sleep well at night, you’re a good moral person, you’re generally happy, you take care of other people, you help out, but you can’t take it too seriously.

Just focus on the one or two really really important things, and everything else, just surrender to it. Just take it as it comes. Just accept it. Be glad with it. Be happy that you’re in this world.

Anger is a loss of control over the situation, and it is a contract that you’re making with yourself — that you’re going to literally be in physical and mental and emotional turmoil.

Morality and ethics automatically emerge when we realize the long term consequences of our actions.

In general, avoid getting into situations where you’re sacrificing today for an imagined tomorrow.

All real success is internal and has very little to do with external circumstances.

When I look back on my life, I want to say I saw the world the way it was.

I can give glib answers all day long, but you have to discover your own personal answer.

People spend too much time doing and not enough time thinking about what they should be doing

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Write what should not be forgotten.

Tears are words that need to be written.

More drugs are taken to quiet the mind than to heal the body.

Guilt is society’s voice speaking in your head.

Self-image is the prison. Other people are the guards.

On what he wants to be remembered for: Don’t care. I’ll be dead.

We are biological machines programmed to survive and replicate. Happy is anti-evolution.

Is it so important to me that I be unhappy unless this goes my way?