Given that the main function of universities these days is filtering and signaling, the best move is to get admitted to Stanford and then drop out.

A vacation is a very expensive way to schedule the time to read a book in peace.

We’re basically monkeys on a small rock orbiting a small backwards star in a huge galaxy, which is in an absolutely staggeringly gigantic universe, which itself may be part of a gigantic multiverse.

On meditation: It’s self-therapy. Instead of paying a therapist to sit there and listen to you, you’re listening to yourself.

It is the mark of a charlatan to explain a simple concept in a complex way.

Politics is sports writ large — pick a side, rally the tribe, exchange stories confirming bias, hurl insults and threats at the other side.

If you can’t delete an email without flinching or responding, you won’t scale.

We are going from bread and circuses to cannabis and video games to psychedelics and VR.

A good conference is a vacation that you take with really smart friends.

Politics is the exercise of power without merit.

How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks. 

Consider what men are when they are eating, sleeping, coupling, evacuating, and so forth. Then what kind of men they are when they are imperious and arrogant, or angry and scolding from their elevated place.

Who exactly are these people that you want to be admired by? Aren’t they the same people you are in the habit of calling crazy? And is this your life ambition, then – to win the approval of lunatics?

‘But I get to wear a crown of gold.’ If you have your heart set on wearing crowns, why not make one out of roses – you will look even more elegant in that.

Have I been made for this, to lie under the blankets and keep myself warm?

Do you have reason? I have. Why then do you not use it?

Under no circumstances ever say ‘I have lost something,’ only ‘I returned it.

Always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are, and what was yesterday a speck of semen tomorrow will be a mummy or ashes.

“A cucumber is bitter.” Throw it away. “There are briars in the road.” Turn aside from them. This is enough. Do not add, “And why were such things made in the world?”

How strangely men act. They will not praise those who are living at the same time and living with themselves; but to be themselves praised by posterity, by those whom they have never seen or ever will see, this they set much value on.

It is just charming how people boast about qualities beyond their control. For instance, ‘I am better than you because I have many estates, while you are practically starving’; or, ‘I’m a consul,’ ‘I’m a governor,’ or ‘I have fine curly hair.’

Begin – to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.

Let us overlook many things in those who are like antagonists in the gymnasium. For it is in our power, as I said, to get out of the way and to have no suspicion or hatred.

He who has a vehement desire for posthumous fame does not consider that every one of those who remember him will himself also die very soon.