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“Liang Qichao, one of China’s leading reformers of the early twentieth century, hailed the importance of the individual in national development, but renounced that view after he visited San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1903 and concluded that the competition between separate Chinese clans and families was preventing Chinese people from prospering. “If we were to adopt a democratic system of government now,” he wrote, “it would be nothing less than committing national suicide.”
― Evan Osnos, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

“To survive in China you must reveal nothing to others. Or it could be used against you … That’s why I’ve come to think the deepest part of the self is best left unclear. Like mist and clouds in a Chinese landscape painting, hide the private part behind your social persona. Let your public self be like rice in a dinner: bland and inconspicuous, taking on the flavors of its surroundings while giving off no flavor of its own.”
― Evan Osnos, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

“The greatest difference between Internet dating in America and in China was conceptual: in America, it had the power to expand your universe of potential mates; in China, a nation of 1.3 billion people, online dating promised to do the opposite.”
― Evan Osnos, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

“There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all.”
― Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers—Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship