Peter Thiel Quotes

Today's 'best practices' lead to dead ends; the best paths are new and untried.

The most successful businesses have an idea for the future that's very different from the present.

Competition is overrated. In practice it is quite destructive and should be avoided wherever possible. Much better than fighting for scraps in existing markets is to create and own new ones.

Every business is successful exactly to the extent that it does something others cannot.

The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.

Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius.

We cannot take for granted that the future will be better, and that means we need to work to create it today.

Customers won’t care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way. And if you can’t monopolize a unique solution for a small market, you’ll be stuck with vicious competition.

When you are starting a new business you don't want to go after giant markets. You want to go after small markets and take over those markets quickly.

EVERY MOMENT IN business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.

The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world; when you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator.

Monopoly is the condition of every successful business.

All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.

You have as much computing power in your iPhone as was available at the time of the Apollo missions. But what is it being used for? It’s being used to throw angry birds at pigs; it’s being used to send pictures of your cat to people halfway around the world; it’s being used to check in as the virtual mayor of a virtual nowhere while you’re riding a subway from the nineteenth century.

Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consulting and investment banking. For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves?

The most fundamental reason that even businesspeople underestimate the importance of sales is the systematic effort to hide it at every level of every field in a world secretly driven by it.

There are only two kinds of businesses in this world: Businesses in crazy competition, and businesses that are one of a kind.

There is perhaps no specific time that is necessarily right to start your company or start your life. But some times and some moments seem more auspicious than others. Now is such a moment. If we don’t take charge and usher in the future - if you don’t take charge of your life - there is the sense that no one else will.

The road doesn’t have to be infinite after all. Take the hidden paths.

I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.

Everybody has a product to sell—no matter whether you’re an employee, a founder, or an investor. It’s true even if your company consists of just you and your computer. Look around. If you don’t see any salespeople, you’re the salesperson.

Society is secretly driven by sales

Of the six people who started PayPal, four had built bombs in high school.

Whatever the career, sales ability distinguishes superstars from also-rans.

The value of failure is greatly over-rated. It's a preposterous myth.