Wisdom in fragments

It is precisely because of all those years of anticipating and designing for failure that they are alive today.

Canadian Astronaut & International Space Station Commander

Going around the world thousands of times presents you with the depth, fragility, strength and richness of Earth; and gives you a sense of what 4.5 billion years actually means. I travelled with our Earth as it crossed the Solar System and watched as Winter and Summer swapped- it was like watching the world take one of 4.5 billion breaths.

Canadian Astronaut & International Space Station Commander

Seeing the Earth from space gives you an unfiltered understanding of it. Until you see the Earth from this vantage point, everything you knew about the planet was based on something that someone else had told you – based on their own filtered understanding and bias.

Canadian Astronaut & International Space Station Commander

Most every decision that your team will make is independent of you as a leader. Once in a while, they may update you or ask you a question, but the vast majority of decisions are made either individually, or inside teams- and if those individuals and teams don't know what that end-game truly looks like, the odds of them making the right decision at any moment in time diminishes.

Canadian Astronaut & International Space Station Commander

99.9% of the time, you are not in a burning building- and that is precisely the time to think about what you would do in that 0.1% of time when it is on fire. A lack of information and preparedness in an emergency or crisis can be the difference between carrying yourself through, and sometimes, catastrophic outcomes.

Canadian Astronaut & International Space Station Commander

Having a plan, feeling confident and being competent are the greatest antidotes to fear. If you're just trying to deal with the unknown by crossing your fingers and hoping, you will be utterly helpless when a situation finally manifests. In reality, you're rarely (if ever) completely helpless, you allow yourself to be helpless.

Canadian Astronaut & International Space Station Commander

In postmodernism, there are no absolute truths; everything is relative, of course other than the one absolute truth that there are no absolute truths. This is a form of intellectual terrorism, nihilism.

Evolutionary Psychologist & Author Known for Consumer Behavior Research

Everything we do in one sense or another is consummatory. We consume religious narratives, we consume literature, we consume friendships. Our mate choices are the ultimate form of consumer choice.

Evolutionary Psychologist & Author Known for Consumer Behavior Research

The main currency on our campuses has become the management of hurt feelings.

Evolutionary Psychologist & Author Known for Consumer Behavior Research

It takes intellectuals to come up with some of the most moronic ideas possible.

Evolutionary Psychologist & Author Known for Consumer Behavior Research

Humans can be parasitized by actual brain worms, but also by idea pathogens that cause them to behave in profoundly maladaptive ways.

Evolutionary Psychologist & Author Known for Consumer Behavior Research

I can't advertise chewing gum to my children because it's unethical, but I can feed them all sorts of narratives that will have a profound impact on their personal trajectories. It's quite an extraordinarily hypocritical position.

Evolutionary Psychologist & Author Known for Consumer Behavior Research

If Leonardo Da Vinci could somehow be transported to the present, he would be blown away by the level of knowledge that's available to all of us by a simple press of a key. It follows that we all have the opportunity to be on the level of Da Vinci or Franklin because we all have access to so many different forms of knowledge.

Author of "The 48 Laws of Power" & Strategist

I want you to not deny your shadow, your darkest impulses, but to find ways to use them and turn them into something productive. We ought to take that ambition, those aggressive impulses, and channel them into our work, into great causes, into justice.

Author of "The 48 Laws of Power" & Strategist

You have to have some humility in life before you can begin to understand yourself, and before you can begin to change yourself, the world, or other people. If you only think others have problems, you're never going to be able to look at yourself and change who you are.

Author of "The 48 Laws of Power" & Strategist

The number one thing I've discovered is that people deny that they have any of these traits. We always want to say it's that other person who is a narcissist, the other person is aggressive, they have envy, but no…. not us. We deny we have these qualities and make out as if we are the exception.

Author of "The 48 Laws of Power" & Strategist