The more you think you know, the more closed-minded you'll be.

There is an excellent correlation between giving society what it wants and making money, and almost no correlation between the desire to make money and how much money one makes.

Don't be a perfectionist, because perfectionists often spend too much time on little differences at the margins at the expense of other big, important things. Be an effective imperfectionist. Solutions that broadly work well (e.g., how people should contact each other in the event of crises) are generally better than highly specialized solutions (e.g., how each person should contact each other in the event of every conceivable crisis).

When people get at each other's throat, the rich and the poor and the Left and the Right and so on, and you have a basic breakdown, that becomes very threatening.

Some people have subject matter expertise in one thing. Some people tend to be creative but not reliable, and others are reliable but not creative. Everybody has different dimensions.

Meditation helps you stay in a calm, clear-headed state so that when challenges come at you, you can deal with them like a ninja - in a calm thoughtful way. When you're centered, your emotions are not hijacking you.

It is a law of nature that you must do difficult things to gain strength and power. As with working out, after a while you make the connection between doing difficult things and the benefits you get from doing them, and you come to look forward to doing these difficult things.