Latest Quotes

“News in general doesn't matter most of the time, and most people would be far better off if they spent their time consuming less news and more ideas that have more lasting import. Even if it's fiction, it's probably better most of the time.”

— Evan Williams, Techcrunch.com

“Like acting, sales works best when hidden. This explains why almost everyone whose job involves distribution— whether they're in sales, marketing, or advertising— has a job title that has nothing to do with those things. People who sell advertising are called 'account executives.' People who sell cu…”

— Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“In 2009, Blake sold a small Box account to the Stanford Sleep Clinic, where researchers needed an easy, secure way to store experimental data logs. Today the university offers a Stanford-branded Box account to every one of its students and faculty members, and Stanford Hospital runs on Box. If it ha…”

— Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“We know that a text does not consist of a line of words, releasing a single 'theological' meaning (the 'message' of the Author-God), but is a space of many dimensions, in which are wedded and contested various kinds of writing, no one of which is original: the text is a tissue of citations, resultin…”

— Roland Barthes, constantvzw.org

“Once the Author is gone, the claim to 'decipher' a text becomes quite useless. To give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the writing.”

— Roland Barthes, constantvzw.org

“I have a mirror opposite my shower door. When I step out of the shower, there I am in full view of my mirror. Most of the time I am not too keen on what I see. I start thinking I should exercise more, eat better, get in better shape. I could say that my mirror tells me this, but of course it does no…”

— Linda L. Williams, Nietzsche's Mirror: The World as Will to Power

“There is also something unsettling about Nietzsche proposing anything like a 'supreme moral principle' after his criticisms against Kant's ethical theory. Nietzsche's critiques of morality suggest that offering a new first principle for morality is not his project. His problems with Kant's Categoric…”

— Linda L. Williams, Nietzsche's Mirror: The World as Will to Power

“As the experiment was designed, the groups consisted of 'liberal' and 'conservative' members — the former from Boulder, the latter from Colorado Springs. It is widely known that Boulder tends to be liberal and that Colorado Springs tends to be conservative. The groups were screened to ensure that th…”

— Cass R. Sunstein, Republic.com 2.0

“Consciousness is the last and latest development of the organic and hence also what is most unfinished and unstrong.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors.”

— Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Tolstoy was right — the emotions and ideas in fiction are highly contagious, and people tend to overestimate their immunity to them.”

— Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human

“As a good rule of thumb, proprietary technology must be at least 10 times better than its closest substitute in some important dimension to lead to a real monopolistic advantage. Anything less than an order of magnitude better will probably be perceived as a marginal improvement and will be hard to…”

— Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“If you focus on near-term growth above all else, you miss the most important question you should be asking: will this business still be around a decade from now? Numbers alone won't tell you the answer; instead you must think critically about the qualitative characteristics of your business.”

— Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Inside a firm, people become obsessed with their competitors for career advancement. Then the firms themselves become obsessed with their competitors in the marketplace. Amid all the human drama, people lose sight of what matters and focus on their rivals instead.”

— Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“The storytelling mind is allergic to uncertainty, randomness, and coincidence. It is addicted to meaning. If the storytelling mind cannot find meaningful patterns in the world, it will try to impose them. In short, the storytelling mind is a factory that churns out true stories when it can, but will…”

— Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human

“We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.”

— Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human

“Fiction may be, at least in part, a pleasure technology, a co-opting of language and imagery as a virtual reality device which allows a reader to enjoy pleasant hallucinations like exploring interesting territories, conquering enemies, hobnobbing with powerful people, and winning attractive mates. F…”

— Steven Pinker, Harvard.edu

“… There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am…”

— Bret Easton Ellis, Patrick Bateman , American Psycho

“There is a psychoanalytic myth called the lamella. This is a word used in biology, botany, and anatomy to refer to a thin membrane or casing. Lacan used it to metaphorize the idea of a narcissitic shell, a myth employed to illustrate the stakes of love in the games of erotic passion and commitment.…”

— Simon Critchley, Stay, Illusion!: The Hamlet Doctrine

“Life is a detour for an organism that came from nothing and will soon return to nothing.”

— Simon Critchley, Stay, Illusion!