• "Individuals search for truth, groups search for consensus."
  • "It’s easier to macro-bullshit than micro-bullshit."
  • "I realized something surprisingly profound: Everybody’s ideas seem obvious to them. I’ll bet even John Coltrane or Richard Feynman felt that everything they were playing or saying was pretty obvious. So maybe what’s obvious to me is amazing to someone else."
  • "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."
  • "How much you truly 'believe' in something can be manifested only through what you are willing to risk for it."
  • "Everything that is not forbidden by laws of nature is achievable, given the right knowledge."
  • "There's a deep connection between explaining the world and controlling it."
  • “Cherish those who seek the truth, but beware of those who find it.”
  • “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
  • "Truth has predictive power."
  • "Think of radical honesty like nudity: use when appropriate and prudent."
  • "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."
  • "A contrarian isn't someone who always objects - that's a conformist of another sort. A contrarian reasons independently, from the ground up, and resists pressure to conform."
  • "Rationality is avoidance of systemic ruin."
  • "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."
  • "It's almost always possible to be honest and positive."
  • "The truest way to decline is just to say, 'it doesn’t feel right to me.' No explanation is necessary."
  • "Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean."
  • "What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?"
  • "All knowledge is conjectural."
  • "Suffering is a moment of clarity, when you can no longer deny the truth of a situation and are forced into uncomfortable change. Inside suffering is the seed of change."
  • “Before you can lie to another, you must first lie to yourself.”
  • “The nature of illusion is that it’s designed to make you feel good. About yourself, about your country, about where you’re going – in that sense it functions like a drug. Those who question that illusion are challenged not so much for the veracity of what they say, but for puncturing those feelings.”
  • "One of the ways in which I know that I’m finding truths out is that problem is solved for good. I don’t have to revisit that same problem again."
  • "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."
  • "I can give you an argument, but I can't give you an understanding."
  • "'Wise' and 'smart' are both ways of saying someone knows what to do. The difference is that 'wise' means one has a high average outcome across all situations, and 'smart' means one does spectacularly well in a few."
  • "A wise person knows what to do in most situations, while a smart person knows what to do in situations where few others could."
  • "A great deal of knowledge is unconscious, and experts have if anything a higher proportion of unconscious knowledge than beginners."
  • “The true method of knowledge is experiment.”
  • "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
  • "It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry."
  • "People lie their way out of reality when they've been hurt by reality."
  • "It is so easy to be wrong—and to persist in being wrong—when the costs of being wrong are paid by others."
  • "The worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them."
  • "When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear."
  • “Physics is the law - everything else is a recommendation.”