THE ART OF WAR
Never fight with desperate people. They have nothing to lose. In wars, try death-ground strategy, and be desperate. Always have sense of urgency.
When you have success, be extra wary. When you are angry, take no action. When you are fearful, know you are going to exaggerate the dangers you face. - Robert Greene
BILLIONAIRE ADVICE
If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.
How to thrive in an unknowable future? Choose the plan with the most options. The best plan is the one that lets you change your plans. - Derek Sivers
Be expensive - Marc Andreessen
Expect disaster - Tony Robbins
Own as little as possible - Kevin Kelly
Health is non-negotiable - Tim Ferris
Everyone is interested in what’s new. Few people are interested in what’s better. - Tim Ferris
Life punishes the vague wish, and rewards the specific ask. - Tim Ferris
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage - Tim Ferris
Success can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations we are willing to have, and by the number of uncomfortable actions we are willing to take.
GENERAL ADVICE and WISDOM
Beg for forgiveness; don’t ask for permission.
Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something - Plato
We are largely better at doing than we are at thinking.
No victor believes in chance - Nietzche
BUSINESS, FINANCE
It’s much easier to scam for billions rather than millions. — Charles Ponzi
Doing the Unrealistic Is Easier Than Doing the Realistic.
From contacting billionaires to rubbing elbows with celebrities —it’s as easy as believing it can be done.
It’s lonely at the top.
Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre.
The level of competition is fiercest for “realistic” goals, paradoxically making them the most time-and energy-consuming.
It is easier to raise $10,000,000 than it is $1,000,000. It is easier to pick up the one perfect 10 in the bar than the five 8s.
If you owe the bank a hundred thousand dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank a hundred million dollars, you own the bank.
Economists speak of three functions of money: medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value.
Pharmaceutical companies are better at inventing diseases that match existing drugs, rather than inventing drugs to match existing diseases.
In science you need to understand the world; in business you need others to misunderstand it.
Commerce is fun, thrilling, lively, and natural. Academia is none of these.
Debt always fragilizes economic systems.
Warren Buffet:
Rule No. 1 : Never lose money. Rule No. 2 : Never forget Rule No. 1.
Honesty is a very expensive gift, Don't expect it from cheap people.
In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. If you hire somebody without integrity, you really want them to be dumb and lazy.
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
If history books were the key to riches, the Forbes 400 would consist of librarians.
Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful
The most important thing to do if you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.
Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing
No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.
The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.
You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.
Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.
There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.
If you've been playing poker for half an hour and you still don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy.
In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.
What the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.
Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble.
Wall Street is the only place that people drive to in a Rolls Royce to take advice from people who ride the subway.
Time is the friend of the wonderful business, the enemy of the mediocre.
Good jockeys will do well on good horses but not on broken-down nags.
It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
RISK
Organisms that treat threats as more urgent than opportunities have a better chance to survive and reproduce.
People become more risk-seeking when all options are bad.
The combination of loss aversion and narrow framing is a costly curse
Closely following daily fluctuations is a losing proposition, because the pain of the frequent small losses exceeds the pleasure of the equally frequent small gains.
The sunk-cost fallacy keeps people for too long in poor jobs, unhappy marriages, and unpromising research projects.
A decision maker with diminishing marginal utility for wealth will be risk averse.
The psychological response to a change of wealth is inversely proportional to the initial amount of wealth.
POLITICS, LEADERSHIP
In politics, stupidity is not a handicap. — Napolean
A leader is a dealer in hope. — Napolean
The worst damage has been caused by competent people trying to do good; the best improvements have been brought by incompetent ones not trying to do good. — Taleb
Useful idiots and useless smarts are in abundance in a democracy.
“You don't reason with intellectuals. You shoot them.” - Napolean
For what the leaders are, that, as a rule, will the men below them be. —Xenophon
PRIDE
Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority. - Arthur Schopenhauer
HAPPINESS, MISERY
The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy. ― Arthur Schopenhauer
TALENT, GENIUS, INTELLIGENCE
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.
A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race—and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin. - Ayn Rand
There seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it. ― David Graeber
Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed — Daniel Kahneman
COGNITION
If we hear a lie often enough we tend to believe it. This is called Cognitive Ease.
EVOLUTION
Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. - Richard Dawkins
Anything that has evolved by natural selection should be selfish. - Dawkins
Natural Selection depends on “longevity”, as well as “fecundity”(frequency) and fidelity(frequency of copying errors)
DNA has two functions: 1) Replication 2) Protein synthesis
Evolution never looks towards future.
LIFE, AVARICE
The surest way to remain poor is to remain honest. — Napolean
To understand the liberating effect of asceticism, consider that losing all your fortune is much less painful than losing only half of it. - Nassim Taleb
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
The internet exponentially increased our ability to communicate. Blockchains exponentially increase our ability to organize.
We are survival machines — robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. - Richard Dawkins
Evolution never looks to the future.
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. - Galileo Galilei
SELF-REFLECTION
It is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong. — Warren Buffett
For every subtle and complicated question, there is a perfectly simple and straightforward answer, which is wrong.
The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is boredom.
Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
The person you are the most afraid to contradict is yourself. - Nassim Taleb
We understand life backwards, but live it forwards - Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room - Pascal
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people. - Schopenauer
TRUTH
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. - Arthur Schopenhauer
“What important truth do very few people agree with you on? - Peter Thiel
WRITING
The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience. - Arthur Schopenhauer
One should use common words to say uncommon things
HUMAN BEHAVIOR
People generally apologize so that they can do it second time again. — Nassim Taleb
Men give attention to get sex. Women give sex to get attention.
Some reticent people use silence to conceal their intelligence; but most do so to hide the lack of it. — Nassim Taleb
Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgment - François de La Rochefoucauld
Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius. - Peter Thiel
It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. ― Mark Twain
If you want to tell lies that will be believed, don't tell the truth that won't.
SOCIAL PHENOMENON
Madness is the exception in individuals, but the rule in groups. — Nietzsche
The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. - Oscar Wilde
Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule - Peter Thiel
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed. ― Mark Twain
If you want to tell lies that will be believed, don't tell the truth that won't.
Play to people's fantasies. The key to fantasy is distance. Promise the moon. - Robert Greene
MASS PSYCHOLOGY MANIPULATION
If you want to tell lies that will be believed, don't tell the truth that won't.
Play to people's fantasies.
ETHICS
If you find any reason why you and someone are friends, you are not friends.
Life’s beauty: the kindest act toward you in your life may come from an outsider not interested in reciprocation.
We are most motivated to help those who need us the least.
To value a person, consider the difference between how impressive he or she was at the first encounter and the most recent one.
Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone.
True humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others; the rest is either shyness or good marketing.
We find it to be in extremely bad taste for individuals to boast of their accomplishments; but when countries do so we call it “national pride.”
You can only convince people who think they can benefit from being convinced.
Greatness starts with the replacement of hatred with polite disdain.
Trust people who make a living lying down or standing up more than those who do so sitting down.
Even the cheapest misers can be generous with advice.
If you lie to me, keep lying; don’t hurt me by suddenly telling the truth.
Don’t trust a man who needs an income—except if it is minimum wage.
You may outlive your strength, never your wisdom.
Weak men act to satisfy their needs, stronger men their duties.
Avoid calling heroes those who had no other choice.
There are those who will thank you for what you gave them and others who will blame you for what you did not give them.
I trust everyone except those who tell me they are trustworthy.
People often need to suspend their self-promotion, and have someone in their lives they do not need to impress. This explains dog ownership.
The difference between magnificence and arrogance is in what one does when nobody is looking.
In a crowd of a hundred, 50 percent of the wealth, 90 percent of the imagination, and 100 percent of the intellectual courage will reside in a single person—not necessarily the same one.
MOTIVATION
Sense of urgency multiplies strength and builds momentum.
Necessity is the mother of all inventions.
The way of the samurai is in desperateness. Common sense will not accomplish great things. Simply become insane and desperate. — Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai, Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Practice doesn’t make perfect; practice makes permanent. - Warren Buffett
How can you achieve your 10 year plan in the next 6 months? - Peter Thiel
GENERAL FACTS
Since 1800, the population of the world has multiplied six times, yet average life expectancy has more than doubled and real income has risen more than nine times.
People are not only spending a longer time living, but a shorter time dying.
An hour of work today earns you 300 days’ worth of reading light; an hour of work in 1800 earned you ten minutes of reading light.From six hours to half a second — a 43,200-fold improvement — for an hour of lighting: that is how much better off you are than your ancestor was in 1800, using the currency that counts, your time.
JEALOUSY, ENVY
Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied.
ON POWER
Power makes you lazy.
Solitary pleasures will always exist, but for most human beings, the most pleasurable activities almost always involve sharing something: music, food, liquor, drugs, gossip, drama, beds. - David Graeber
ANTIFRAGILE
The aphorisms here are directly picked from Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragile.
Some things thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors: evolution, culture, ideas, revolutions, political systems, technological innovation, bacterial resistance.
Anything that has more upside than downside from random events (or certain shocks) is antifragile.
We are largely better at doing than we are at thinking.
I’d rather be dumb and antifragile than extremely smart and fragile.
Don’t confuse rationalizing with rational — the two are almost always exact opposites.
SINGULARITY
Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion’, and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control. — I J Good
HOUSE OF CARDS (FRANK UNDERWOOD)
It only takes 10 seconds to crush a man’s ambition.
The road to power is paved with hypocrisy, and casualties. Never regret
Power is a lot like real estate. It’s all about location, location, location. The closer you are to the source, the higher your property value.
Shake with your right hand, but hold a rock in the left.
If you don’t like how the table is set, turn over the table
The best thing about human beings is that they stack so neatly.”
For those of us climbing to the top of the food chain, there can be no mercy. There is but one rule: hunt or be hunted.
There’s no better way to overpower a trickle of doubt than with a flood of naked truth.
I have often found that bleeding hearts have an ironic fear of their own blood.
What a martyr craves more than anything is a sword to fall on. So you sharpen the blade, hold it at just the right angle, and then 3,2,1…
I’ve always loathed the necessity of sleep. Like death, it puts even the most powerful men on their backs
A lion does not ask permission before he eats a zebra.
A great man once said, everything is about sex. Except sex. Sex is about power.
That’s how you devour a whale… one bite at a time.
What is the face of a coward? The back of his head as he runs from the battle.
The sort of pain that makes you strong, or useless pain. The sort of pain that's only suffering. I have no patience for useless things.
Proximity to power deludes some into thinking they wield it.
Money is the Mc-mansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after 10 years. Power is the old stone building that stands for centuries. I cannot respect someone who doesn't see the difference
It's so refreshing to work with someone who'll throw a saddle on a gift horse rather than look it in the mouth.
BILLIONS (BOBBY AXELROD)
What's the point of having fuck you money if you never say fuck you?
The only enemy more dangerous than a man with unlimited resources is one with nothing to lose. And that is what you are looking at right here.
What is it that you do that you're the best in the world at? You offer a service you didn't invent, a formula you didn't invent, a delivery method you didn't invent. Nothing about what you do is patentable or a unique user experience. You haven't identified an isolated market segment, haven't truly branded your concept. You need me to go on? So, why would an investment bank put serious money into it? I all but told you ahead of time, but you wouldn't listen. Now you've heard it, but it's too late. You weren't ready.
Everyone has access to information. We just analyze it better.
Nobody leaves a negotiation happy.
Look for a small win, anything. Make others loss bigger than yours. Make it a lose-lose scenario.
A boy never really becomes a man until he buries his father.
Being a billionaire, when you walk into a room, it’s like being a woman with a perfect set of tits.
Hate is nature’s most perfect energy source.It’s endlessly renewable.
I don't lie to myself, and I don't hold on to a loser.
Whenever you can, put a company in your mouth
I think you're trying to bully me, and a bully is devastated when you try to stand up to him.
A good matador doesn’t try to kill a fresh bull. You wait until he’s been stuck a few times.
In all deals, get under the skin, and make them make a mistake.
The greats never sacrifice the important for the urgent. They handle the immediate problem and still make sure to secure the future.
SUITS (HARVEY SPECTOR)
I’m not interested in great, I want to know who its Daddy is.
I don’t have dreams, I have goals.
Winners don’t make excuses when the other side plays the game
When you’re backed against the wall, break the goddamn thing down.
I could be drinking a juice box and still kick your ass.
Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.
I Don’t play the odds, I play the man.
Ever loved someone so much, you would do anything for them? Yeah, well make that someone yourself and do whatever the hell you want.
That’s the difference between you and me. You wanna lose small, I wanna win big.
Here are my A,B,C’s: A) I don’t take meetings, I set them. B) And my respect isn’t demanded, it’s earned. C) is for people who show me they understand A & B.
Life is this. I like this.
First impression is last. Dominate.
Don’t raise your voice, improve your argument.
Work until you no longer have to introduce yourself.
Never destroy anyone in public when you can accomplish the same result in private.
You’d be surprised what people you trust would do when someone puts them in a position where they think they don’t have a choice.
Win a no win situation by rewriting rules.
Kill them with success, bury them with a smile.
Let them hate, just make sure they spell your name right.
It’s not a problem if you always win.
I’m not about caring, I’m about winning.
I’m against having emotions, not against using them
The only time success comes before work is in dictionary.
Good guys have to do bad things to make bad guys pay.
It’s not bragging if it’s true.
What are your choices when someone puts a gun to your head? What are you talking about? You do what they say or they shoot you. WRONG. You take the gun, or you pull out a bigger one. Or, you call their bluff. Or, you do any one of a hundred and forty six other things.
They think you care. They’ll walk all over you
The ends don’t justify the means until your ass is on the line.
You always have a choice.
I refuse to answer that on the grounds that I don’t want to.
I don’t get lucky, I make my own luck.
Anyone can do my job, but noone can be me.
I believe in work, I don’t fuck with luck.
It’s going to happen because I’m going to make it happen.
You want to change your life, change your thinking.
Never quit on something that you can’t go a day without thinking about.
You’re never going to win big if you’re always minimizing losses.
I am a humble but very earnest seeker after truth.
- Mahatma Gandhi