Consulting is where product companies go to die. - Paul Graham

One of the most consistent mistakes I made when I was younger was to spend my time learning about things that other people thought were interesting — things that were cool or prestigious — instead of trusting my own curiosity.

Seventeenth-century England was much like the third world today, in that government office was a recognized route to wealth. The great fortunes of that time still derived more from what we would now call corruption than from commerce.11 By the nineteenth century that had changed.

the probability of being able to "beat the system" increases when the system is inconsistent or corrupt.