If people were super-optimistic about technology there would be no reason to be pessimistic about the future. — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
Probably the most extreme form of inequality is between people who are alive and people who are dead. — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
Of the six people who started PayPal, four had built bombs in high school. — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
Most people are average. Founders are not. Founders' traits seem to have an inverse normal distribution to them. — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
Had the people who started Facebook decided to stay at Harvard, they would not have been able to build the company, and… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
People don't want to believe that technology is broken. Pharmaceuticals, robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology - all these areas where the progress has… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
I think in my twenties I tended to think of all people as sort of more or less alike. In now think… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
I think that markets classically fail in cases where there are public goods that provide benefits that people cannot capture. The big… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
The idea of becoming an entrepreneur is something that is not taught very well in school and is something that people should… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
I think somehow people should be encouraged to think about a very long time horizon and I think this is true for… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
If you think about basic science or coming up with new theories of mathematics, these are not the kinds of things which… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
I'm skeptical of a lot of what falls under the rubric of education… People are on these tracks. They are getting these… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
Thinking about how disturbingly herdlike people become in so many different contexts—mimetic theory forces you to think about that, which is knowledge… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
“the trivial but revealing hallmarks of urban hipsterdom: faux vintage photography, the handlebar mustache, and vinyl record players all hark back to… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
One of the reasons I think people are increasingly nervous about U.S. debt is because they think that we are not actually… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
You have as much computing power in your iPhone as was available at the time of the Apollo missions. But what is… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
People working on bigger ideas on a more protracted timeline will be more on the stealth side. They aren't releasing new PR… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
My own answer to the contrarian question is that most people think the future of the world will be defined by globalization,… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
As an investor-entrepreneur, I’ve always tried to be contrarian, to go against the crowd, to identify opportunities in places where people are… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
Education needs to be rethought. Education does not just happen in college, but it also happens in developing skills which will enable… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
Big part of the challenge to innovation is that people too easily resign themselves to dying. — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed. Education may be the only thing people still believe in in… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
There are many more secrets in the world that are waiting to be found. The question of how many secrets exist in… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
There are quite a lot of people who think my aspirations are not possible. That's a good thing. We don't need to… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
I think markets are often not thinking on a long-time horizon, I think that our government structurally is doing even less so.… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
Now it’s either about technology that doesn’t work or about technology that’s used in bad ways. The anthology of the top twenty-five… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
People don't want to believe that technology is broken. Pharmaceuticals, robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology - all these areas where the progress has been a… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
If you think about basic science or coming up with new theories of mathematics, these are not the kinds of things which are necessarily… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
I think we have a bubble in the US in government bonds, because of the quantitative easing and the negative real interest rates, and… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
“Time and decision-making themselves follow a power law, and some moments matter far more than others” — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
“Today, we exaggerate the differences between left-liberal egalitarianism and libertarian individualism because almost everyone shares their common indefinite attitude. In philosophy, politics, and business,… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
When you already have $150 billion a year in revenues from the iPhone, it's very hard to come up with any new vertical that… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
“CREATIVE MONOPOLY means new products that benefit everybody and sustainable profits for the creator. Competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful differentiation, and… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
“we have given up our sense of wonder at secrets left to be discovered.” — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
“Today our society is permeated by the twin ideas that death is both inevitable and random.” — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
“if your company can be summed up by its opposition to already existing firms, it can’t be completely new and it’s probably not going… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
“Is a lukewarm attitude to one’s work a sign of mental health? Is a merely professional attitude the only sane approach?” — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
“If you’ve invented something new but you haven’t invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business—no matter how good the… — Peter Thiel Copy Share Image
