Every time I have to look up a word in the dictionary, I'm delighted.

We do not yet have the solutions to these questions, but the awareness that we live in an endangered world is present in more and more life situations.

There's a lot of arrogance in the medical community. There are good, reliable websites you can go to for information - the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins.

I'm in remission. I need to get my physical conditioning to a higher level. I was always very fit. I need to get back to where I am very confident in my ability to bike a long way.

“The cavemen had the same natural resources at their disposal as we have today, and the difference between their standard of living and ours is a difference between the knowledge they could bring to bear on those resources and the knowledge used today.” 

“In short, numbers are accepted as evidence when they agree with preconceptions, but not when they don’t.” 

“. . ideology. . . is an instrument of power; a defense mechanism against information; a pretext for eluding moral constraints in doing or approving evil with a clean conscience; and finally, a way of banning the criterion of experience, that is, of completely eliminating or indefinitely postponing the pragmatic criteria of success and failure. —Jean-François Revel1” 

“Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true, but many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence.” 

“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of our own ignorance.” 

“What then is the intellectual advantage of civilization over primitive savagery? It is not necessarily that each civilized man has more knowledge but that he requires far less.” 

“The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves. You can talk about “social justice” all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get reelected. That is not social justice or any other kind of justice.” 

“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.” 

Instead of memorizing, understand the basics so you can derive answers.

The bigger problem this generation will face is adult education, not child education

There’s a whole set of things we don’t even bother trying to teach. We don’t teach nutrition. We don’t teach cooking. We don’t teach how to be in happy, positive relationships. We don’t teach how to keep your body healthy and fit. We just say sports. We don’t teach happiness. We don’t teach meditation.

"Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future."

Knowing something about everything allows you to navigate life. But knowing everything about something can show you what depth has to offer. It also gives you a joy and appreciation for what life has to offer.

I think every child has the love of learning. Children are learning machines. They stop learning either because their ego gets too big and thinks that it knows everything or that it thinks it doesn’t needs to know more. Or because society somehow fails them.

What’s really important is to develop a love of learning. That is more important than anything else; it’s more important than what you learn. It’s more important than what school you go to, and it’s more important than what job you have.

Your most important skill isn’t even what you majored in or even what you studied, it’s just knowing how to learn.

If I’m running a grade school curriculum for children, I would probably optimize happiness, nutrition, diet, exercise, “How do you build good habits?”, “How do you break bad habits?”, “How do you have good relationships?”, “How do you find your spouse?”, meditation, “How do you build basic skills, not memorize lots of facts?”, “What kinds of books should you read?”

Keeping your intellectual curiosity alive is really important. The only way that’s going to happen is if you learn what you love, if you read what you love, if you do what you love.

Identify your strengths and apply them to what you care about. Iterate at the edge of knowledge. Building it will feel like play to you, but look like work to others.

On his best parenting advice: Love them unconditionally, try not to say “no”, and always reward their innate curiosity.