Peter Thiel Quotes

There's a real cowardice in the movie business. If you don't meet the right crazy people, you can't do it.

To act with confidence beyond the range of familiar beacons and to overcome society’s resistance requires aptitudes that are present in only a small fraction of the population.

I'm up for challenges. I'm up for being outside the box, making tough decisions and challenges... And I'm a little bit of an adrenaline junkie.

I run a creative company, and the best way to support creatives is to make them fearless and willing to take big swings. That is an important part of our culture at A&E Networks.

Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise

I strongly urge students to learn to take risks, to be bold, to let their genius convert that fear into power and brilliance.

The big characters who occupy science, especially modern science, are all "off" in fundamental ways. I don't think that genius goes hand in hand with being socially inept or being a sociopath or being a misanthrope, but I do think that it is a mind that can think so differently - so beyond how one is supposed to think. I wanted to pay tribute to that mind.

I think we need to grow in our self-assurance that is not scared of being challenged, that the truth we uphold can stand up to the closest possible scrutiny.

I think bravery is when you're willing to really put yourself on the line and maybe lose out, financially - and be able to say exactly what motivates you and what inspires you and what you find completely unacceptable in humanity and in culture.

Genius is only a superior power of seeing.

[Courage] always bigger than what you think you can handle, but you're never going to be given something you can't handle. So you say, "Okay, when you tell me what it is that I'm supposed to do, please give me the courage to do it."

I really feel like if you can get past your fear, if you can say, "Uh-uh, I'm afraid to do that and I'm going to do it anyhow," that that's really the way to have a satisfying life moving forward. I think I had that kind of fearlessness even as a young person. It wasn't tempered by experience or wisdom, but it took me a long way.

The bolder the action, the greater the genius, magic and power that is likely to flow from it.

The obscurest sayings of the truly great are often those which contain the germ of the profoundest and most useful truths. Genius rapidly traverses the living present to bury itself in the deepest mysteries of the universe; often making the grandest discoveries at a single glance.

It's only by thinking even more crazily than philosophers do that you can solve their problems.

Universities are of course hostile to geniuses.

I think it’s important to have a good hard failure when you're young. I learned a lot out of that. Because it makes you kind of aware of what can happen to you. Because of it I’ve never had any fear in my whole life when we’ve been near collapse and all of that. I’ve never been afraid. I’ve never had the feeling I couldn’t walk out and get a job doing something.

One essential ingredient for being an original in the day of copies is courageous vision.

For I think it is the case with genius that it is not when quiescent so very much above mediocrity as the difference between the two might lead us to think, but that it has the power and privilege of rising from that level to a height utterly far from mediocrity: in other words that its greatness is that it can be so great.

The difference between a brave man and a coward is a coward thinks twice before jumping in the cage with a lion. The brave man doesn't know what a lion is. He just thinks he does.

Be confident, and just do it. It's all about not questioning what everyone else is thinking, since they're probably looking to others to know what is or isn't cool.

A moral coward is one who is afraid to do what he thinks is right because others will disapprove or laugh. Remember that all men have their fears, but those who face their fears with dignity have courage as well.

The continuous capacity of genius to surpass understanding remains a human constant.

You'll never do anything creative, innovative or world changing if you fear criticism. Pioneers are easy targets for arrows!

'Totally mad,' he said, 'utter nonsense. But we'll do it because it's brilliant nonsense.'