Peter Diamandis Quotes

None of our men are 'experts.' We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the 'expert' state of mind a great number of things become impossible.

Start at the top then work your way UP.

Traditional systems reject bold thinking and despise Moonshots. Give yourself permission and freedom to build on top of what exists, rather than being shackled by it.

when Steve Jobs said that the goal of every entrepreneur should be to "put a dent in the universe" — he wasn't talking about inventing the next Angry Birds.

A quarter of the planet's available landmass is currently used to keep 20 billion chickens, 1.5 billion cattle, and 1 billion sheep alive —

People who let go of the old paradigm and ride the wave will end up ahead. You're trapped by your history only if you choose to be.

the tools of cooperation have become so powerful that once properly incentivized, it’s possible to bring the brightest minds to bear on the hardest problems. This is critical, as Sun Microsystems cofounder Bill Joy famously pointed out: “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.

biggest companies and government agencies were designed in another century, for purposes of safety and stability. Built to last, as the saying goes. They were not built to withstand rapid, radical change. This is why, according to Yale's Richard Foster, 40 percent of today's Fortune 500 companies will be gone in ten years, replaced, for the most part, by upstarts we've not yet heard of. Institutions are similarly suffering.

nanotechnology has the potential to enhance human performance, to bring sustainable development for materials, water, energy, and food, to protect against unknown bacteria and viruses, and even to diminish the reasons for breaking the peace [by creating universal abundance].

Yet for these high, hard goals to really work their magic, Locke and Latham found that certain moderators — the word psychologists use to describe “if-then” conditions — need to be in place. One of the most important is commitment. “You have to believe in what you’re doing,” continues Latham. “Big goals work best when there’s an alignment between an individual’s values and the desired outcome of the goal. When everything lines up, we’re totally committed — meaning we’re paying even more attention, are even more resilient, and are way more productive as a result.” This is another key point. When Kelly Johnson created the original skunk works, the goal wasn’t to build a new plane in record time — that was just one of many things that happened on the way to the main big goal: saving the world from Nazi peril. This is the kind of big goal everyone can get behind. It’s why the engineers agreed to work horrific hours in a foul-smelling circus tent. And most importantly, because this alignment between core values and desired outcomes jacked up performance and productivity, it became one of the fundamental reasons that plane was delivered in record time. The Secrets of Skunk: Part Two At the Lockheed skunk works, Kelly Johnson ran a tight ship. He loved efficiency. He had a motto — “be quick, be quiet, and be on time” — and a

The issue, then, is that we are interpreting a global world with a system built for local landscapes. And because we've never seen it before, exponential change makes even less sense.

Most of today's educational systems are built upon the same learning hierarchy: math and science at the top, humanities in the middle, art on the bottom. The reason for this is because these systems were developed in the nineteenth century, in the midst of the industrial revolution, when this hierarchy provided the best foundation for success. This is no longer the case. In a rapidly changing technological culture and an ever-growing information-based economy, creative ideas are the ultimate resource. Yet our current educational system does little to nourish this resource.

If I were an exponential entrepreneur looking to create tremendous value, I'd look for those jobs that are least enjoyable for humans to do. . . . Given that the global market for unskilled labor is worth many trillions of dollars, I would say this is a huge opportunity.

industrialized educational system designed to produce a standardized product. Heralded by the bell, students moved from one “learning station” to the next, while standardized tests ensured quality control — young minds well prepared for the needs of society. What were those needs? Back then, obedient factory workers.

Low-cost fuels, high-performing vaccines, and ultrayield agriculture are just three of the reasons that the exponential growth of biotechnology is critical to creating a world of abundance.

Electrical signals require electrons, which generate heat, which limits the amount of work a chip can perform and requires a lot of power for cooling. Light has neither limitation. If IBM's estimations are correct, over the next eight years, its new chip design will accelerate supercomputer performance a thousandfold, taking us from our current 2.6 petaflops to an exaflop (that's 10 to the 18th, or a quintillion operations per second) — or one hundred times faster than the human brain.