Be wary of the arrogant intellectual who comments from the stands without having played on the field.

Competitiveness is really what it costs you per man-hour to get you what you want. In other words, there's an education level that plays into the mix and so if it's inexpensive to buy an hour of real good education in places like China versus the U.S., that factors in.

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).

I think it is in the nature of individuals and individual entities not to self-correct.

Ironically, people who suppress the mini-confrontations for fear of conflict tend to have huge conflicts later, which can lead to separation, precisely because they let minor problems fester. On the other hand, people who address the mini-conflicts head-on in order to straighten things out tend to have the great, long-lasting relationships.

I believe that understanding what is good is obtained by looking at the way the world works and figuring out how to operate in harmony with it to help it evolve.

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.