michael swanton

“Fourth is “flatness.” As globalization advances, people perceive the world as one homogeneous, highly competitive marketplace: the world is “flat.” Given that assumption, anyone who might have had the ambition to look for a secret will first ask himself: if it were possible to discover something new, wouldn’t someone from the faceless global talent pool of smarter and more creative people have found it already?”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Humans have a tendency to suggest the obvious first.”
― Bill Burnett, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life

“There are two kinds of secrets: secrets of nature and secrets about people. Natural secrets exist all around us; to find them, one must study some undiscovered aspect of the physical world. Secrets about people are different: they are things that people don’t know about themselves or things they hide because they don’t want others to know.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“faith in secrets. If you think something hard is impossible, you’ll never even start trying to achieve it. Belief in secrets is an effective truth.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future