Peter Thiel Quotes

Nothing energizes me more than to burrow myself under a pile of received wisdom and emerge triumphant with the truth.

Scientific criticism has no nobler task than to shatter false beliefs.

I sometimes think that we underestimate Trump, but that's just my opinion. I always like to tack the other way, I guess.

The historian's first duties are sacrilege and the mocking of false gods. They are his indispensable instruments for establishing the truth.

The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.

I don't want you to trust me, I want you to question everything I say.

Start out understanding religion by saying everything is possibly wrong... As soon as you do that, you start sliding down an edge which is hard to recover from.

You should never assume anything coming from a critical standpoint. You should go into everything assuming you're going to get crushed.

I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions... Don't take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can't. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself.

My son, I do not say these are foals and those asses, these little monkeys and those great baboons, as you would have me do. As I told you from the first, I regard them as earth's heroes. But I do not wish to believe them without cause, nor to accept those propositions whose antitheses (as you must have understood if you are not both blind and deaf) are so compellingly true.

I try and take everyone's ideals, common morals, flip them around, make people look at them differently, question them, so that you're not always taking things for granted.

Most men of education are more superstitious than they admit - nay, than they think.

Consider the reasons which make us certain that we are right, but not the fact that we are certain. If you are not convinced, ignore our certainty. Don't be tempted to substitute our judgment for your own.

Do not allow yourself to be misled by the surfaces of things

Why can you believe the lie, but not the truth?

Contrary to popular belief, I'm not promiscuous. There does seem to be a mistaken belief out there that I am sexually available somehow — which is not to say that I'm not open-minded about sex.

Every mystery ever solved had been a puzzle from the dawn of the human species right up until someone solved it.

Underneath the reality in which we live and have our being, another altogether different reality lies concealed.

God is like a person who clears his throat while hiding and so gives himself away. God lies in wait for us with nothing so much as love.

Our belief in any particular natural law cannot have a safer basis than our unsuccessful critical attempts to refute it.

I had inherited what my father called the art of the advocate, or the irritating habit of looking for the flaw in any argument.

The least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable.

Violence maims not only the body but also the mind and spirit. As Pierre Bourdieu has argued, it lies "on the side of belief and persuasion." If we are to counter violence by offering young people ways to think differently about their world and the choices before them, they must be empowered to recognize themselves in any analysis of violence, and in doing so to acknowledge that it speaks to their lives meaningfully.

There is no faith, without a critical mind

At some point, a false belief collides with physical reality.