Shane Parrish Quotes

• “You get paid linearly for analyzing and solving problems. You get paid non-linearly for spotting and siezing opportunities.”

  Shane Parrish

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• “You don’t have to solve problems for others. You can let them be uncomfortable.”

  Shane Parrish

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• “You can’t improve if you don’t know what you’re doing wrong.”

  Shane Parrish

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• “If I were a Dr., I’d prescribe books. They can be just as powerful as drugs.”

  Shane Parrish

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• “The second thing we can do is to learn how to fail properly. Failing properly has two major components. First, never take a risk that will do you in completely. (Never get taken out of the game completely.) Second, develop the personal resilience to learn from your failures and start again. With these two rules, you can only fail temporarily.”

  Shane Parrish

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• “«Ignorance more often begets confidence than knowledge.»”

  Shane Parrish

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• “«Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking.»”

  Shane Parrish

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• “we are all accustomed to believe that maps and reality are necessarily related, or that if they are not, we can make them so by altering reality.”

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• “Many people mistakenly believe that creativity is something that only some of us are born with, and either we have it or we don’t. Fortunately, there seems to be ample evidence that this isn’t true. We’re all born rather creative, but during our formative years, it can be beaten out of us by busy parents and teachers. As adults, we rely on convention and what we’re told because that’s easier than breaking things down into first principles and thinking for yourself. Thinking through first principles is a way of taking off the blinders. Most things suddenly seem more possible.”

  Shane Parrish

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• “We run into problems when our knowledge becomes of the map, rather than the actual underlying territory it describes.”

  Shane Parrish

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• “«Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.»”

  Shane Parrish

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• “The skill for finding the right solutions for the right problems is one form of wisdom.”

  Shane Parrish

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• “Anybody can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.”

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• “The most powerful productivity tool ever invented is simply the word "No.”

  Shane Parrish

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• “Socratic questioning generally follows this process: Clarifying your thinking and explaining the origins of your ideas. (Why do I think this? What exactly do I think?) Challenging assumptions. (How do I know this is true? What if I thought the opposite?) Looking for evidence. (How can I back this up? What are the sources?) Considering alternative perspectives. (What might others think? How do I know I am correct?) Examining consequences and implications. (What if I am wrong? What are the consequences if I am?) Questioning the original questions. (Why did I think that? Was I correct? What conclusions can I draw from the reasoning process?)”

  Shane Parrish

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• “First, we’re so afraid about what others will say about us that we fail to put our ideas out there and subject them to criticism. This way we can always be right. Second, if we do put our ideas out there and they are criticized, our ego steps in to protect us. We become invested in defending instead of upgrading our ideas.”

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• “When you see someone doing something that doesn’t make sense to you, ask yourself what the world would have to look like to you for those actions to make sense.”

  Shane Parrish

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• “Far more probability estimates are wrong on the “over-optimistic” side than the “under-optimistic” side. You’ll rarely read about an investor who aimed for 25% annual return rates who subsequently earned 40% over a long period of time. You can throw a dart at the Wall Street Journal and hit the names of lots of investors who aim for 25% per annum with each investment and end up closer to 10%.”

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• “Decisions based on improved understanding will be better than ones based on ignorance.”

  Shane Parrish

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• “You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.”

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• “Ownership and control are different things.”

  Shane Parrish

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• “« You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.”

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• “The leverage you have may not always be the leverage you want, but chances are, if you look, you will find you have some somewhere.”

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• “I need to listen well so that I hear what is not said.”

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• “There is an old adage that encapsulates this: “To the man with only a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.” Not every problem is a nail. The world is full of complications and interconnections that can only be explained through understanding of multiple models.”

  Shane Parrish

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