Reid Hoffman Quotes

One who loves must learn fear. One who fears must learn love. The thinker must do. The doer must think. The pacifist must fight, the fighter must find peace. If you flow as a river, burn as a fire. If you burn as a furnace, flow as a river. If you fly as a bird, sit firm as a rock. If you sit firmly, then fly as a bird. Be a fire that flows. A rock that flies. Love with fear and fear with love. For we are not fire, not water, not air, not rocks, not thoughts, not deeds, not fear, not love. We are G-dly beings.

There's an old chestnut that asks whether an entrepreneur is born or made and I think it's a combination of both. You need the talent; without the talent you can't do it.

Having a good idea is one thing, but persuading other people to buy it is quite another. Good inventors are polymaths: they think with their hands and their brains. They're experts in design, engineering and business.

Thinking about language, while thinking _in_ language, leads to puzzles and paradoxes.

One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.

In art, and maybe just in general, the idea is to be able to be really comfortable with contradictory ideas. In other words, wisdom might be, seem to be, two contradictory ideas both expressed at their highest level and just let to sit in the same cage sort of, vibrating. So, I think as a writer, I'm really never sure of what I really believe.

In the principle of equality I very clearly discern two tendencies; one leading the mind of every man to untried thoughts, the other prohibiting him from thinking at all.

Yes. The way people behave, the paradoxes, the contradictions. All these things we have to live with and still pretend that everything is only black or white. That, I think, is the most interesting thing in human nature. The fact that we have to do one thing and pretend something else. That’s when it becomes very interesting. If you can literally speak the way you feel, then it’s not interesting anymore. It’s when you have to lie that it becomes interesting.

When we fear things I think that we wish for them ... every fear hides a wish

If you can just learn to think about the market first, you will have a big leg up on most people starting startups.

Law of Attraction won't let you remove a thought. You cannot concentrate upon NOT thinking about something hard enough to stop thinking about it! For the more you decide you will not think about it, the more you think about it!...Think about that.

Please don't think me negligent or rude. I am both, in effect, of course, but please don't think me either.

Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." I say, "I do not think, that is why I exist."

Ironic philosophies produce passionate works.

I never thought of that before! It's my opinion that you never think at all.

What’s this? What are the antagonists doing here – infiltrating their own audience? Well, they’re not really. It’s somebody else’s audience at the moment, and these nightly spectacles are an appreciable part of the darkside hours of life of the rocket capital. The chances for any paradox here, really, are less than you think.

And I, the for­mer mys­tic, was think­ing: Yes, man is stronger, greater than God. When Adam and Eve de­ceived You, You chased them from par­adise. When You were dis­pleased by Noah’s generation, You brought down the Flood. When Sodom lost Your fa­vour, You caused the heav­ens to rain down fire and damna­tion. But look at these men whom You have be­trayed, al­low­ing them to be tortured, slaugh­tered, gassed, and burned, what do they do? They pray be­fore You! They praise Your name!

F. Scott Fitzgerald has an indespensible quote: 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at once and still retain the ability to function'. Or, as I like to call it, 'O.J. killed his wife, and the police are corrupt.'

Act as if the future of the universe depends on what you do, while laughing at yourself for thinking that your actions make any difference.

Then, when people saw you strolling around at high noon holding your rosary beads, they’d think, ‘Well, that can’t be a vampire.

This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.

Thinking is the capital, Enterprise is the way, Hard Work is the solution

Life is so simple, really. Think through what people want, watch what others fail to give them, and provide it. Then bill'em.

I liked the monsters, I liked them because I couldn't understand how something so scary could also be so good. It got me thinking as a very early age, and I had a lot of rehearsal.

I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.