Peter Thiel Quotes

“Monopoly is the condition of every successful business.”

“Every time we create something new we go from zero to one.”

“Never invest in a tech CEO that wears a suit.”

“Your mind is software. Program it. Your body is a shell. Change it. Death is a disease. Cure it. Extinction is approaching. Fight it.”

“What valuable company is nobody building?”

“As an investor-entrepreneur, I've always tried to be contrarian, to go against the crowd, to identify opportunities in places where people are not looking.”

“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.”

“You are not a lottery ticket.”

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

“What's preventing you from achieving your ten-year goals inside of six months?”

“Company culture doesn't exist apart from the company itself: no company has a culture; every company is a culture.”

“We certainly were not ideologically monolithic in any way. But the fact that there were a lot of strong personal connections — not only I had with people, but they had with one another — gave it a certain esprit de corps that helped a lot. That kind of intense camaraderie was what was super helpful to get through the boom and the bust.”

“I believe in what hasn't yet been seen or been done.”

“Looking back at my ambition to become a lawyer, it looks less like a plan for the future and more like an alibi for the present. It was a story I told myself when I didn't know what else to do.”

“When I left the firm, after seven months and three days, my coworkers were surprised. One of them told me that he hadn't known it was possible to escape from Alcatraz.”

“There's always a chance I might change my mind. But by talking to you, it makes it hard for me to change my mind. My husband doesn't want me to give them any more money, and he's right.”

“The Trump administration is trying to pull off an extremely difficult thing. America is no longer a great country.”

“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. We are in a deadly race between politics and technology.”

“He's the one writer who has influenced me the most. Once you learn about it, his view of imitation as the root of behavior is something you will see every day, not just in people around you but in yourself.”