“Consciousness is any kind of subjective experience whatsoever. The philosopher, Thomas Nagel, put it like this, 'for a conscious organism, there is something it is like to be that organism…' – there is something it is like to be me, to be you, to be a dolphin – but there's probably nothing like what it is to be a chair, table, or iPhone.”
— Anil Seth
Neuroscientist & leading researcher on consciousness and perception

The quote archive

Wisdom in fragments

A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.

This realization that everywhere you look is home and everywhere you look there is something new and beautiful and wonderful to discover. It is a real lesson in Earthling and Earth appreciation.

— Nicole Stott

NASA Astronaut & ISS Expedition Crew Member

I don't think I ever would have had the confidence in myself to even pick up the pen. I would have continued to believe that this wasn't something that could ever be real for me. That one small bit of encouragement had such a huge impact on my life. It made me realize how sometimes it really is the little stuff that's most important, and we never know how significant our encouragement can be in someone else's life.

— Nicole Stott

NASA Astronaut & ISS Expedition Crew Member

It absolutely never failed to amaze and lure me in. In fact, if I was at the window during the work day, I had to set a timer on my watch, because I would just get immersed in the view. It's like a transcendence; I just started doing meditation, and it's a little like that where you can just completely separate yourself and just be sucked into it.

— Nicole Stott

NASA Astronaut & ISS Expedition Crew Member

Everything is just crystal-clear and glowing. Our planet just glows with all the colours you know Earth to be made of, but in a way, that's almost transparent, iridescent. Seeing our planet from space is so much more than a visual experience, I think it's about feeling it, I think it really is about having a kind of spiritual connection to it, that you feel. Total awe, humbling.

— Nicole Stott

NASA Astronaut & ISS Expedition Crew Member

The entrepreneurs I like are the ones running real businesses without all the bullshit about the hype and the valuations. I've made the most money with people who put their nose to the grindstone and don't talk about valuation.

— Kevin O’Leary

Shark Tank investor, businessman, and former Canadian political candidate

The sacrifice is perhaps a decade- and it's a total sacrifice- you may not see your kids, you may miss an entire cycle of your lives, but you're doing it to provide for them in the future in a way you never could if you were an employee.

— Kevin O’Leary

Shark Tank investor, businessman, and former Canadian political candidate

Entrepreneurs that do it for greed of money fail. Entrepreneurship isn't about greed, it has nothing to do with that; what matters is personal freedom.

— Kevin O’Leary

Shark Tank investor, businessman, and former Canadian political candidate

What motivates great entrepreneurs is fear of failure; and here's the thing – most entrepreneurs fail several times before they achieve success, and the more you fail, the more fear you have.

— Kevin O’Leary

Shark Tank investor, businessman, and former Canadian political candidate

It taught me the difference between the two types of people in the world. Those that own the store, and those that scrape shit off the floor. You have to decide which one you want to be. I didn't want to scrape shit off the floor. I wanted to own the store.

— Kevin O’Leary

Shark Tank investor, businessman, and former Canadian political candidate

The real 'a-ha!' moment of my experience was realising that resilience is not a muscle we're born with, it's something we have to build and believe in over time. We should never ask ourselves how much resilience we have, but rather how much we can build.

— Sheryl Sandberg

COO of Facebook & Author of "Lean In

Resilience is the responsibility and opportunity of the community. We can either face it and learn from it or we can pretend it's not happening. We have to explicitly face the fact that resilience is the responsibility of all of us, together.

— Sheryl Sandberg

COO of Facebook & Author of "Lean In

In order to fix bias you have to admit to them, you have to admit they exist and bring them out of the shadows. Then you can call them out. We have to stop pretending that there's no adversity, or that we can't do anything about the adversity we face.

— Sheryl Sandberg

COO of Facebook & Author of "Lean In

You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

— Alfred Lin

Competition is great for consumers, but nothing destroys enterprise value faster than intense competition. To succeed in commerce, you need a great operating team focused on the nitty gritty details of the business.

— Alfred Lin

Either as a startup founder or a venture capital investor, you should not care about what others believe to be exciting or overhyped. Do your own primary research and make up your own mind.

— Alfred Lin

Great founders such as Brian Chesky of Airbnb, Drew Houston of Dropbox, or Adi Tatarko of Houzz, are all on a mission to build a product or service that corrects something that they believe the world got wrong. They are on a mission to correct a personal problem or personal pain.

— Alfred Lin