Some cool quotes

"l'art pour l'art": art for the sake of art

The world would've been a better place had it never happened, but a lot of fun was had by all

Autotelic: an activity being done for the sake of itself

Ceaseless action outruns depression

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to money, for money's sake.

No man's life should be accounted a happy one until it's over.

The recipe for great work is very exacting taste, plus the ability to gratify it.

I understand that there's a guy inside of me who wants to lay in bed and smoke weed all day and watch cartoons and old movies. My whole life is a series of strategies to avoid and outwit: that guy.

The first principle is to not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool

There are so many things in this world that I do not want

The reason to win the game is so that you can be free of it

Memento Mori: Latin for "remember you will die"

Success is not final, Failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts

Building a software application is like solving a puzzle in an open world game

What's the purpose of social media if I don't bring it to you real, no image?

Companies are just effective problem-solving machines

Success lies not in the elimination of problems but in the art of creative, profitable, problem solving

Desire is a contract that you make with yourself that you will be unhappy until you get what you want

You know what you should do…

The answer should either be 'Hell Yes!' Or 'No.'

Independence is the end that wealth serves for Charlie (Munger)

Reducing stupidity over a long period of time IS genius

Genius has the fewest moving parts

Intelligence compounds

Your garden is not complete until there is nothing you can take out of it.

Average technology and good marketing beat good technology and average marketing every day of the week

Think bigger

Cash flows, more than any other single variable, seem to do the best job of explaining a company's stock price over the long term. If you could know for certain just 2 things: a company's future cash flows and a future number of shares outstanding, you would have an excellent idea of the fair value of a share of that company's stock today. You'd also need to know appropriate discount rates. But if you knew the future cash flows for certain, it would also be reasonably easy to know which discount rates to use. It's not easy, but you can make an informed forecast of future cash flows by examining a company's performance in the past and by looking at certain factors such as the leverage points and scalability in that company's model. Estimating the number of shares outstanding in the future requires you to forecast items such as option grants to employees or other potential capital transactions. Ultimately, your determination of cash flow per share would be a strong indication of the price you might be willing to pay for a share of ownership in any company.

You can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something. Because believing the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path. And that will make all the difference

It's going to be small, I'm only going to hire smart people and we're only going to work on things that don't take much time. The ideal 'hard job' is the one that is generally perceived as being difficult but can quickly succumb to a bit of cleverness. All you need is a few smart people who could do these so-called 'hard jobs' quickly and we would make a lot of money while not working all that hard. That had been my favorite approach to work from the beginning.

If you live each day as if it were your last, some day you will most certainly be right.

Wake up, identify your weakness and work on that. Go to sleep. Wake up, and do it all over again

When you look at something through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility is being superior to your former self

We played a game we could never win. To the Utmost.

In this very interesting, sort of game theoretic setting; that is life.

I want the future to look like the future

Learn the rules like a Pro, so you can break them like an Artist

Build fast

1. Build something people want 2. Don't be boring 3. Safe is risky 4. Design rules now 5. "Very good" is bad 6. Inertia

It's kind of fun to do the impossible

Days are long, Years are short

Is this the beginning or the end?

If I wasn't already doing this, would I be doing this?

Stay hungry, stay foolish

Think of your life as a rainbow arcing across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear. The 2 end points of everyone's rainbow are birth and death. Most people have not thought about these events very much. It's as if we shelter from them; afraid that the thought of mortality will somehow wound us. For me, it's the opposite. To know my arc will fall, makes me want to blaze in the sky. Not for others. But for myself. For the trail I know I am leaving.

When doing trades, instead of trying to get a larger piece of the pie, try to make the pie larger for both parties

Culture begins with leadership. Leaders must cast an umbrella upon everyone in the company and make their perception, reality.

Elon Musk's Production Algorithm: 1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from "a department". You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement, then you should question it no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous because people are less likely to question them. Then, make the requirements less DUMB. 2. Delete any part of the process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, you didn't delete enough. 3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step 2. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. 4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have done the first 3 steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should've been deleted. 5. Automate. This comes last. The big mistake with Tesla was that I tried to automate every step from the beginning. We should have waited for the first 4 steps to play out before we automate.

The only rules are those dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation.