Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best. - Peter Thiel

Identity is a very strange concept. It can mean two opposite things. It can mean that which makes you unique and it can mean that which makes you identical.

There are all these different experiences people have. There is an African American experience, there is a women’s experience, there is a gay experience… You don’t want to pretend that it does not exist and you don’t want to make it all-important. It is very hard for us to find the right way to talk about this.

As a gay person I don’t want to be in the closet, but I also don’t want to be in the ghetto. The closet and the ghetto are exclusive – those are two different possibilities – but I hope they are not exhaustive, that those are not the only two.

Our educational system both drives and reflects our obsession with competition. Grades themselves allow precise measurement of each student’s competitiveness; pupils with the highest marks receive status and credentials. We teach every young person the same subjects in mostly the same ways, irrespective of individual talents and preferences. Students who don’t learn best by sitting still at a desk are made to feel somehow inferior, while children who excel on conventional measures like tests and assignments end up defining their identities in terms of this weirdly contrived academic parallel reality.

competition is an ideology — the ideology — that pervades our society and distorts our thinking.