"He was deeply philosophical, he didn’t take himself nor life too seriously. He appreciated the mysteries of life, he appreciated living life, and he had a lot of fun along the way. To me, he was like a full-stack intellectual hacker of life."
"Applied science is the engine that pulls humanity forward. It eventually becomes technology. That technology allows us to engage in all kinds of pursuits around civilization ... And so I think scientists are still the most unsung heroes of human history."
"In the real world, you get paid for making good judgments and decisions based on the basics ... So the basics are really important. That’s the steel frame, the foundation for understanding that you need to get through life."
"The hard parts are not the learning, it is the unlearning ... It’s the beginner’s mind that every great artist, or every great business person has, which is: you have to be willing to start from scratch. You have to be willing to hit reset and go back to zero."
"There’s no lottery here to win. The lottery is for losers. Lotteries are just attacks on people who can’t do math. Your get-rich-quick schemes are just other people getting rich off of you. There are no shortcuts."
"Anxiety is built into the core of who we are. In fact, you could argue that all the mind does all day long is fear-based scenario planning for survival, and then maybe a little bit of greed for replication."
"The most important relationship you have is with yourself ... That is your world. That is the world you live in. That’s the worldview you have. That’s the lens you see through, and that’s going to determine the quality of your life more than anything else."
"And if you want to see what the quality of your life actually is ... just sit by yourself, doing nothing. And then you will know what the quality of your life actually is because that’s what you’re always running away from."
"Proper examination should ruin the life that you’re currently living ... If it doesn’t do that, it’s not real examination. If it doesn’t come attached with destruction of your current life, then you can’t create the new life in which you will not have the anxiety."
- Sit for 60 minutes every day for at least 60 days
- First thing in the morning
- Sit up with back straight
- Whatever your mind wants to do, you just let it do
"Eventually you will get to a mental state of inbox zero." — @naval
"When the best hour of my day is spent by myself, then the world has very little to offer me. And I can still participate in it, but it doesn’t have that grip on me that it used to. I don’t fear solitary confinement. And I think that is a superpower."
"What you want to focus on is what’s timeless. Timeless is great. The old questions all have old answers and they’re best consumed from the old practitioners because they were very clear-minded about it."
The people that I want to spend time around these days, when I look at the common characteristic, they’re highly self-aware...They have a certain separation from their own thoughts and personality that prevents circumstances and their personality from overwhelming them.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."
— Richard Feynman
"You (@naval) represent becoming self-aware and spending time on the timeless while also reserving the right, with competency, to be a very high-level operator in the real world."
"Not fooling yourself, paying attention to yourself, not taking yourself too seriously, examining your own thoughts from first principles and doing activities that are intrinsically for you (as opposed to for the external world), they just make your life better."
It's heartbreaking, and humanity should learn a lot from it.
(THREAD)
I read a portion of @davideagleman's new book "Livewired" which includes Danielle Crockett's story.
She had no genetic problems, but her brain development was derailed by severe social deprivation for 7 years.
"She missed the critical window for proper input from the world."
"A feral child (also called wild child) is a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and so has had little or no experience of human care, behavior or human language."
- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
- How to Get Rich
- JRE #1309
- FS The Knowledge Project #18
- Tim Ferriss #97 & #136
- Email exclusive w/ Kapil Gupta
- Save Planet, Get Rich #5
- Various @naval tweets
50+ top quotes from Naval's podcast with Joe Rogan (and a few extras):
- Meaning of Life
- Peace
- Happiness
- Desire
- Authenticity
- Individuality
- Mastering Your Mind
- Creativity
- Learning
- & More
35+ top book recommendations from "The Almanack of Naval Ravikant"
- Best Book of the Last Decade
- Best Less Mainstream Book
- Most Gifted
- Most Listened-to
- Most Returned-to
- Favorite Sci-Fi
- Books He Would Give His Kids
- Top Authors
- & More