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

Large groups are no place for smart people.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I kind of feel like every moment is a death. You can’t go back to the past; no one’s ever gone back even a second. I don’t even remember what I said two minutes ago.

I do everything for me. I don’t do anything for other people. None of us do. I think we all like to pretend like we’re doing everything for other people, but the reality is, we’re always just doing it for ourselves. That’s just the truth, and so whenever people ask me why did I do X or Y or Z, it’s always for me; that’s why I did it.

We don’t always get what we want, but sometimes what is happening is for the best. The sooner you can accept it as a reality, the sooner you can adapt to it.

When you’re on your death bed, when you’re on your last day, you’d give up every dollar in the bank for a few days, another hour, another minute.

This universe has been around probably for 10 billion years or more, and will be around for tens of billions of years afterwards. Your existence, my existence is just infinitesimal. It’s like a firefly blinking once in the night.

The universe has been around for a long time, and the universe is a very, very large place. If you’ll study even the smallest bit of science, for all practical purposes we are nothing. We are ameba. We are bacteria to the universe.

Judgment allows us to move through the world, but it’s also what separates us from one another. If I’m judging my friends and family, I’m separating myself from them. I’m creating a gap between us by putting them down and propping myself up.

That feeling of disconnection, loneliness, is eventually what leads to suffering.

Over time, as you judge, judge, judge, you invariably judge people. You judge yourself. You separate yourself from everything, and then you end up lonely.

We’re used to constantly judging things. The act of judging something separates you from that thing.

The fundamental insecurity – most people need faith in something – religion, government, academia. Few are comfortable with decentralized systems.

Involve groups in the creative process and you inevitably end up with a pile of pleasing, socially-acceptable lies. Contrast blockbuster movies with the great books.

The most powerful people in the world today are the people who are writing the algorithms for Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram because they’re controlling the spread of information. They’re programming the culture.