It's good to test yourself and develop your talents and ambitions as fully as you can and achieve greater success; but I think success is the feeling you get from a job well done, and the key thing is to do the work.
Peter ThielRead
The first question we would ask if aliens landed on this planet is not, 'What does this mean for the economy or jobs?' It would be, 'Are they friendly or unfriendly?'
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of safety and interpersonal relationships over economic concerns in the face of the unknown.
Peter Thiel's quote highlights a fundamental human instinct to prioritize our safety and the nature of our relationships with others, even in hypothetical scenarios involving extraterrestrial life. Rather than immediately considering the economic ramifications of such an event, our first instinct would be to ascertain whether these visitors pose a threat or are allies, underlining our intrinsic need for security and understanding when confronted with the unfamiliar.
Themes
AliensSafetyRelationshipsEconomyFear
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about science fiction films, one might quote this to illustrate our concern for safety over economic implications.
More from Peter Thiel
All quotes →People working on bigger ideas on a more protracted timeline will be more on the stealth side. They aren’t releasing new PR announcements every day. The bigger the secret and the likelier it is that you alone have it, the more time you have to execute. There may be far more people going after hard secrets than we think.
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What is it about our society where anyone who does not have Asperger's gets talked out of their heterodox ideas?
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Every time you write an email, it is in the public domain. There are all these ways where security is not as good as people believe.
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Creating value isn't enough - you also need to capture some of the value you create.
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A startup is the largest endeavor over which you can have definite mastery. You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of Chance. You are not a lottery ticket.
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