From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Our lives have a first and second curve. The first is your me curve - fluid intelligence that peaks around 40. The second is your we curve - your wisdom, teaching, and ability to bring out the best in others. It requires you to serve others.
Running is beautiful and simple – you just put one foot in front of the other at an accelerated pace. There's something primordial about it though – something within us – it's like we're born to run... in this modern era, people choose to run we don't have to run – we're not being pursued by Saber-Toothed Tigers anymore, but we still choose to run. It's something to do which is hard, it connects us to something – and when life gets easy, to feel alive, we need to do something hard.
When faced with the inevitable, get relative.
I realized: I'm working for a company that makes people happy. You don't leave that.
Either I'm in charge of where my awareness goes, therefore dictating what I'm experiencing and feeling, or I allow my environment to dictate where it goes. Most people become a slave to everyone and everything around them.
I don't think there is anything about putting your country first that requires you to turn your back on the rest of the world. If anything, the opposite is true.
To me it was an adventure. I'm a hardened explorer and adventurer, and I remember the whole mission as an adventure with some awesome experiences and beautiful sights.
Chosen suffering is part and parcel of a meaningful life. If you don't have any chosen suffering in your life, you're probably not living the best life you could.
Humans often come together by believing in ideas that may only exist in our imaginations. We have an ability to imagine together, to merge our ideas as a collective, which can slowly move us toward a future once believed to be impossible. This is part of what changes us from being simple animals to a group that will soon travel to Mars and perhaps even further. To me that is magic.
I argue that the ecosystem where idea pathogens originate from is the university; it takes intellectuals to come up with some of the most moronic ideas possible.
We have come to consider children as either being exploited or subject to charity; we hardly ever consider them as the equal human beings they are, born with certain inalienable rights.
The most important thing to me is that wealth has allowed me to live a full life, rich with experiences. I see wealth more as a means to experience than a way to acquire things. It has also given me control over my own time.