The beginning of wisdom is the discovery that there exist contradictions of permanent tension with which it is not possible to live at peace but with which it is not possible to live at all without them.
The record of a money manager who merely stays close to the market is not an outstanding record—it is a record of someone who has successfully rationalized doing nothing. The question is not whether you beat the market, but whether you had the intellectual honesty to know when you had no edge and the discipline to act accordingly.
The paradox of teaching is that to teach it well you have to want to do something else. Any man who takes teaching seriously has always to resist the temptation to prophesy and to preach.
We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforting stability of accepted doctrine and the terrible freedom of intellectual adventure.
It's all too easy to slip into doing a softball puff piece — fawning all over your guests and treating them like gurus dispensing wisdom from a mountain. This is an even easier trap for someone like Dwarkesh, who is very young and who is primarily known for interviewing people instead of for dispensing his own thoughts. So it's extremely impressive that he consistently avoids this trap — he always manages to challenge and provoke his subjects, rather than just letting them spout their usual talking points.
The best ideas are often dangerous ideas. You're not supposed to think them. And if you do, you're not supposed to say them. But the truth doesn't care about your comfort.
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
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