Probability and expectation are not the same. Its probability and probability times the pay off.

People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels - people you don't want to resemble when you grow up

...maximize the serendipity around you.

Deficits are like putting dynamite in the hands of children. They can get out of control very quickly.

A country's assets reside in the tinkerers, the hobbyists, and the risk-takers.

People have the problem of denial. This is one of the things I learned in Lebanon. Everybody who left Beirut when the war started, including my parents, said, 'Oh, its temporary.' It lasted 17 years! People tend to underestimate the gravity of these situations. That's how they work.

The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one.