Brad Feld

“When Baby Boomers grow up and write books to explain why one or another individual is successful, they point to the power of a particular individual’s context as determined by chance. But they miss the even bigger social context for their own preferred explanations: a whole generation learned from childhood to overrate the power of chance and underrate the importance of planning. Gladwell at first appears to be making a contrarian critique of the myth of the self-made businessman, but actually his own account encapsulates the conventional view of a generation.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“The only way you win is by knowing what you’re good at and what you’re not good at, and sticking to what you’re good at.”
― Fred Wilson

“Far from being the smartest possible biological species, we are probably better thought of as the stupidest possible biological species capable of starting a technological civilization—a niche we filled because we got there first, not because we are in any sense optimally adapted to it.”
― Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

“We can start the process of reform by being honest with seniors. Many are led to believe that they have somehow paid for their benefits and that they have earned unconstrained Medicare. Yet the average person joining Medicare today has paid roughly $60,000 into the program over their lifetime and will use $170,000 in benefits.”
― David Goldhill, Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My Father--and How We Can Fix It