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Peter Thiel Quotes

Total quotes: 40
“The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.”
— Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Tagged: Against Groupthink, thinking differently, Against the grain, Seeking Out The Answers for Yourself, Orignal Thinking
“You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.”
— Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Tagged: Life, Creating Value, Making Big Decisions, Deep Focus, Where To Spend Your Energy, Intensity
“It's always a mistake to be too focused on prestige and status...I would always be long substance, short status.”
— Peter Thiel
Tagged: Life
“The biggest secret in venture capital is that the best investment in a successful fund equals or outperforms the entire rest of the fund combined.”
— Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Tagged: Venture Funding, Venture Capital, Financial Bets, Startups
“Education has become a substitute for thinking about the future.”
— Peter Thiel, Thiel Says College as Corrupt as Church 500 Years Ago
Tagged: Collage, Higher Education, Future Planning
“Bitcoin is sort of hedge of sorts against the whole world falling apart.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel: Bitcoin Will Be the 'One Online Equivalent to Gold'- CoinDesk
Tagged: Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies
“As you craft a plan to expand to adjacent markets, don’t disrupt: avoid competition as much as possible.”
— Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Tagged: Competition, Business
“There are all these ways that things have fallen short. It’s still better than Hillary Clinton or the Republican zombies.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel’s Money Talks, in Contentious Ways. But What Does He Say?
Tagged: Hillary Clinton, Republican Party, zombies, Donald Trump
“I don’t think it makes sense to destroy them. Preserve them, study them instead.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel’s Money Talks, in Contentious Ways. But What Does He Say?
Tagged: History, Deleting History
“If you want to create and capture lasting value, don’t build an undifferentiated commodity business.”
— Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Tagged: Creating Value, Commodities
“Everyone says Trump is going to change everything way too much. Well, maybe Trump is going to change everything way too little. That seems like the much more plausible risk to me.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel, Trump’s Tech Pal, Explains Himself
Tagged: Donald Trump, Change, Risk
“The election had an apocalyptic feel to it. There was a way in which Trump was funny, so you could be apocalyptic and funny at the same time. It’s a strange combination, but it’s somehow very powerful psychologically.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel, Trump’s Tech Pal, Explains Himself
Tagged: 2016 Election, Apocalyptic, Donald Trump, Funny, Psychology
“Network effects are very positive things, but there’s a tipping point where they fall over into the madness of crowds.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley is a ‘totalitarian place’
Tagged: Networking, Conformity, peer pressure
“Having some ambition that transcends just making money is a critical thing for a company. But there is some point where it gets crazy and self-delusional.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley is a ‘totalitarian place’
Tagged: Ambition, Greed, Delusion
“I thought supporting Trump was one of the least contrarian things I ever did. Half the country supported him.”
— Peter Thiel, The four most interesting things Peter Thiel said today in New York
Tagged: Donald Trump, Contrarian
“For speaking at the Republican convention, I got attacked way more by liberal gay people than by conservative Christian people.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel, Trump’s Tech Pal, Explains Himself
Tagged: Peter A Thiel, Donald Trump, US Politics, Computers and the Internet, Gawker.com, Hulk Hogan, Christianity, Religion, Politics
“When I was a kid, the great debate was about how to defeat the Soviet Union. And we won. Now we are told that the great debate is about who gets to use which bathroom. This is a distraction from our real problems. Who cares?”
— Peter Thiel, Read Peter Thiel's Speech at the Republican Convention
Tagged: Soviet Union, Culture Wars, Election 2016
“The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors.”
— Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Tagged: Business Evolution, Iteration, Start Small, Startup, Target Markets
“The single greatest danger for a founder is to become so certain of his own myth that he loses his mind.”
— Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Tagged: Ego is the Enemy
“In a world of scarce resources, globalization without new technology is unsustainable.”
— Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Tagged: What Will Matter In The Future, Innovation
“Whatever the superficialities of Mr. Trump might be, he was more authentic than the other politicians. He sort of talked in a way like ordinary people talk. It was not sort of this Orwellian newspeak jargon that so many of the candidates use. So he was sort of real. He actually wanted to win.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel, Trump’s Tech Pal, Explains Himself
Tagged: Donald Trump, Orwellian, Newspeak
“I always have very low expectations, so I’m rarely disappointed.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel, Trump’s Tech Pal, Explains Himself
Tagged: low expectations, Disappointment
“Money is more valuable than anything you could possibly do with it.”
— Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Tagged: Value of Money, Money As An Abstract Instrument, Abstraction of Value
“Competition is for losers.”
— Peter Thiel
Tagged: Bussinus
“The millions of people who vote for Trump are not doing it because of the worst things he said or did. That’s ridiculous. The Americans who are voting for Trump are doing it because they judge the situation of the country to be urgent. We’re at such a crucial point that you have to overlook personal characteristics.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel Defends His Most Contrarian Move Yet: Supporting Trump
Tagged: Election 2016
“If you’re too optimistic, it sounds like you’re out of touch. The Republicans needed a far more pessimistic candidate. Somehow, what was unusual about Trump is, he was very pessimistic but it still had an energizing aspect to it.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel, Trump’s Tech Pal, Explains Himself
Tagged: Election 2016, Trump's Pessimism, Peter A Thiel, Donald Trump, US Politics, Computers and the Internet, Gawker.com, Hulk Hogan
“If you focus on near-term growth above all else, you miss the most important question you should be asking: will this business still be around a decade from now? Numbers alone won't tell you the answer; instead you must think critically about the qualitative characteristics of your business.”
— Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Tagged: Growing A Business, Growing Up, Long-Term Thinking, Number
“Gawker was trying to cut people down to size for not conforming. The ability to speak and not have every word you say get distorted, to have wrong ideas and then be able to correct them — these notions were powerfully undercut by Gawker.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel’s Money Talks, in Contentious Ways. But What Does He Say?
Tagged: Gawker, Media Cliff Notes
“We live in a world where people don’t think conspiracies are possible. We tend to denounce ‘conspiracy theories’ because we are skeptical of privileged claims to knowledge and of strong claims of human agency. Many people think they are not possible, that they can’t be pulled off.”
— Peter Thiel, Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue
Tagged: In Defense of Individual Autonomy, Singular Agency, Conspiraces, Quote of the Moment
“The alt-right leaders are the most like Gawker.”
— Peter Thiel, Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue
Tagged: Gawker Media, Alt-Right
“When people are unanimously on one side, that tells me not that they’ve all figured out the truth but that they are in sort of a totalitarian place, that they are in a one-party state where they are not allowed to have dissenting views.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley is a ‘totalitarian place’
Tagged: Conformity, Totalitarianism, Oppressive, Silicon Valley
“Innovation is a very strange thing in general, because it’s so hard to know what to learn about it or how to study it. Every moment in the history of business, in the history of technology, happens only once. And so there’s no formula.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel on what works at work
Tagged: Innovation, Technology, History, Formula, Business
“It’s not for me to decide what happens to Gawker. If America rallies around Gawker and decides we want more people to be outed and more sex tapes to be posted without consent, then they will find a way to save Gawker, and I can’t stop it.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel, Tech Billionaire, Reveals Secret War With Gawker
Tagged: Gawker Media, Silent Legal Wars, Sex Tapes, Thiel vs. Gawker
“Today our government finds it hard just to make a website.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel: Trump has taught us this year’s most important political lesson
Tagged: Election 2016, Against Bureaucracy, Against Populism
“Why is everyone else so indifferent about their mortality?”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel, Trump’s Tech Pal, Explains Himself
Tagged: Mortality, Legacy, Death, Quote of the Moment, Peter A Thiel, Donald Trump, US Politics, Computers and the Internet, Gawker.com, Hulk Hogan
“I worry that 'conflict of interest’ gets overly weaponized in our politics. I think in many cases, when there’s a conflict of interest, it’s an indication that someone understands something way better than if there’s no conflict of interest. If there’s no conflict of interest, it’s often because you’re just not interested.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel, Trump’s Tech Pal, Explains Himself
Tagged: Election 2016, Conflict of Interests, Experience, Quote of the Moment
“Today we live in a financial age: The right is obsessed with tax cuts, and the left is obsessed with funding increases. Republicans joke about the incompetence of government to please wealthy donors who don’t want to pay for it; Democrats enable incompetence because they are beholden to public-sector unions that expect their members to get paid whether or not they do the job.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel: Trump has taught us this year’s most important political lesson
Tagged: Government, Politics, Libertarianism, Money
“Our task today is to find singular ways to create the new things that will make the future not just different, but better— to go from 0 to 1. The essential first step is to think for yourself. Only by seeing our world anew, as fresh and strange as it was to the ancients who saw it first, can we both re-create it and preserve it for the future.”
— Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Tagged: Think For Yourself, Find Your Own Path, Making The Future Better
“Like acting, sales works best when hidden. This explains why almost everyone whose job involves distribution— whether they're in sales, marketing, or advertising— has a job title that has nothing to do with those things. People who sell advertising are called 'account executives.' People who sell customers work in 'business development.' People who sell companies are 'investment bankers.' And people who sell themselves are called 'politicians.' There's a reason for these redescriptions: none of us wants to be reminded when we're being sold.”
— Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Tagged: Advertising, Business, Personal Sales, Sales, Selling
“One of my good friends said, ‘Peter, do you realize how crazy this is, how everybody thinks this is crazy?’ I was like: ‘Well, why am I wrong? What’s substantively wrong with this?’ And it all got referred back to ‘Everybody thinks Trump’s really crazy.’ So it’s like there’s a shortcut, which is: ‘I don’t need to explain it. It’s good enough that everybody thinks something. If everybody thinks this is crazy, I don’t even have to explain to you why it’s crazy. You should just change your mind.”
— Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel, Trump’s Tech Pal, Explains Himself
Tagged: Peter A Thiel, Donald Trump, US Politics, Computers and the Internet, Gawker.com, Hulk Hogan, Trump, Why we believe what we believe, Quote of the Moment
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