We say peace of mind, but what we really want is peace from mind.

A calm mind, a fit body, and a house full of love. These things cannot be bought - they must be earned.

Those three things (your health, your mental health, and your close relationships) are things that you have to cultivate and can probably bring you a lot more peace and happiness than any amount of money ever will

Get very, very comfortable with frequent small failures

If you're willing to bleed a little bit every day, but in exchange you win big later, you'll do better

First you're accountable for your judgment, judgment is the exercise of wisdom, wisdom comes from experience, and that experience can be accelerated through short iterations

Desire to me is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want

Pick your one overwhelming desire - it's okay to suffer over that one. But on all the other desires, let them go so you can be calm, peaceful, and relaxed.

We live in an age of infinite leverage... and because of that, the impacts of good decision-making are much higher than they used to be

A clear mind leads to better judgment and better outcomes. A happy, calm, and peaceful person will make better decisions... So if you want to operate at peak performance, you have to learn how to tame your mind.

What you do, who you do it with, and how you do it are way more important than how hard you work.

I don't care how rich you are. I don't care whether you're a top Wall Street banker, if somebody has to tell you when to be at work, what to wear, and how to behave, you're not a free person. You're not actually rich.

I think children give you the unique opportunity to genuinely love something more than you love yourself. And I think that is really important for being happy because the moment you love something more than you love yourself, you're no longer self-obsessed; you're no longer thinking about yourself all the time. And the source of misery is thinking about yourself all the time.

You have to find something bigger than you in life eventually, and if you don't, you blow yourself up—maybe not physically and literally but probably mentally ... That could be children, that could be God, that could be a cause, that could be some personal spirituality, that could be some movement, that could be some circle. It could just be the 20 cats that live in your apartment and you love them to death. But whatever the heck it is, you got to love something more than you love yourself because if you don't, you blow your brains out.

The future of work - "The information revolution, by making it easier to communicate, connect, and cooperate, is allowing us to go back to working for ourselves"

I don't want to have to work hard. I don't want to have to roll out of bed at a certain time. I don't want to have to answer to somebody. I optimize for independence and freedom ... I'm lazy. I wake up at 7, 8, 9, 10 AM. I go to sleep at 2 [or] 3 AM. I don't work a lot of days. Some days I work morning to night ... I never want to have to answer to a boss. No one's ever going to tell me what to do.

The computer is the most powerful tool ever invented by humanity. In your pocket, you're carrying the single most powerful thing that all of humanity has ever invented ... Every little bit you can do to figure out how to use that better than you did before is going to give you enormous leverage.

I think most people are working too hard. I think most people are just basically spinning wheels... The older you get, the better you get at just declining work that you know is useless. I have this theory that 99% of work that you do is useless. You still have to do it because it's iterating your way to the 1% that is useful. But, in an ideal world, if you are omniscient, you would just cut to the 1%.

I tell people to learn to code the same reason why I'm sure, in the 1600s or 1700s, it was good advice to tell people to learn to read and to write. Yes, not everyone is going to be a great author. Yes, not everyone is going to be an avid reader. But they should all know how to read and write. And I think coding is just the new literacy. For the same reason you learn mathematics so you're not innumerate, and for the same reason you learn to read and write so you're not illiterate, it's important to learn to code so that you are not computer illiterate. Computer literacy is a basic fundamental skill that will be a requirement of society going forward.

The most important relationship you have is with yourself—it's with this voice in your head that is constantly rattling every waking hour. It's this crazy roommate living inside your mind who's always chattering [and] never shuts up. And you can't control these thoughts—they just come up out of you don't even know where ... Those conversations you're having in your head all the time—that is your world ... That's going to determine the quality of your life more than anything else.

Proper meditation—proper examination—should ruin the life that you're currently living. It should cause you to leave relationships. It should cause you to re-establish boundaries with family members and colleagues. It should cause you to quit your job. It should cause you to change your eating patterns ... If it doesn't do that, it's not real examination. If it doesn't come attached with destruction of your current life, then you can't create the new life in which you will not have the anxiety.

The most powerful people in the world today are the people who are writing the algorithms for Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram because they're controlling the spread of information. They're programming the culture.

All of man's problems arise because he can't sit by himself in a room for 30 minutes alone

Naval's "Art of Doing Nothing" Mediation

Knowing how little you matter is actually very important for your own mental health and happiness. Usually, when you see someone who's depressed, they're trapped in their own mind and taking themselves far too seriously.

A thought exercise - with the right education, everybody can be rich

Every man has two lives and the second starts when he realizes he has just one.

What society wants for you is not what's always good for you. Society is the largest group, and groups search for consensus; individuals search for truth.

Find 3 hobbies: one that makes you money, one that keeps you fit, and one that makes you creative

You can ALWAYS learn better on the job

The number of iterations drives the learning curve...it's not just about the hours you put in

The people with the best judgment are actually among the least emotional

The thing that prevents you from seeing what's actually happening are your emotions; our emotions are constantly clouding our judgment

I probably read one to two hours a day and that puts me in the top .001 percent. I think that alone accounts for any material success that I've had in my life.

Just like fitness can be a choice, health can be a choice, nutrition can be a choice, and working hard and making money can be a choice, happiness can also be a choice as well

Only associate with people who you don’t have to drink to be around them

You're not going to get rich renting out your time

In the future, either you're telling a computer what to do or a computer is telling you what to do—and you don't want to be on the wrong side of that transaction. If you're an Uber driver, the computer's telling you what to do. You're following orders. Your days are numbered in that job because you're not in a creative job. On the other hand, if you're the programmer for Uber, then you are the one who is instructing all these drivers around.

The human brain is not designed to absorb all of the world's breaking news and 24/7 emergencies, injected straight into the skull with clickbait headlines. If you pay attention to that stuff, even if you have a sound mind and body, it will eventually drive you insane.

It's a superpower to learn to enjoy being alone without constant stimulation

Desire is suffering... every desire you have is an axis where you will suffer. So just don't focus on more than one desire to time. The universe is rigged in such a way that if you just want one thing, and you focus on that, you'll get it, but everything else you gotta let go.

If you can’t see yourself looking with someone for life, then don’t work with them for a day

I use my tweets and other people's tweets as maxims that help compress my own learnings and be able to recall them

If you can outsource something for less than your hourly rate, outsource it

Nobody who's any good gives actual investment advice online because they know that's not how investing works. If someone tells you what to buy, they're not going to tell you when to sell. And without any underlying explanation of why you should be buying or selling something, you're essentially just listening to an astrologer.

The learning curve is across iterations

Everyone should just be able to do everything. I don't believe in this model anymore of trying to focus your life down on one thing. You've got one life. Just do everything you're going to do.

In a romantic relationship. I know it's popular to say you have to work on your relationship. I disagree. I say find the relationship where you naturally being you make the other person happy and the other person that should be your person makes you happy

We waste so much energy through anxiety. If you can be calm and still go about your business, it's a superpower.

You have social statisticians, scientists, and researchers in lab coats, literally the best minds of our generation, figuring out how to addict you to the news. And if you fall for it, if you get addicted. your brain will get destroyed.

Every psychedelic state that people encounter using so-called plant medicines can be arrived at just through pure meditation

The smaller you can make your ego, the less desire you’ll have for the outcome you want, and the easier it is to see reality

The more of a desire I have that a decision work out a certain way, the less likely I am to see the truth

Everyone can be rich

You're going to learn a lot more about running a business by actually operating your own business, compared to just reading about how to do so

Specialization is for insects

When you look at the greatest artists and creators, they have this ability to start over that nobody else does

It’s really important to be able to uncondition yourself from your habits - You need to be able to recognize habits that you picked up years ago, that may no longer serve you

If you want to be effective in business, you need a clear, calm, cool, and collected mind

Naval explains Coase theorem and the "atomization of the firm"

The biggest mentor, the biggest teacher is reality—it's the environment giving you feedback. And how are you going to interact with your greatest mentor, which is reality, if you're just sitting around waiting for some monkey to show up and be your mentor?

Like everything in life, if you're willing to make the short-term sacrifice, you'll have a long-term benefit

There are no get-rich-quick schemes. That's just somebody else trying to get rich off of you.

In every moment, in everything that happens, you can look on the bright side of something... There are two ways of seeing almost everything.

You can meditate 24/7. Meditation is not a sit down and close your eyes activity. Meditation is just basically watching your own thoughts like you would watch anything else in the outside world and saying, 'Why am I having that thought?Does that serve me anymore? Is this just conditioning from when I was 10 years?'

I would rather read the best hundred books over and over again until I absorb them rather than read every single book out there

The best workout for you is the one you’re excited about and the same goes for books – the best books to read are the ones you’re excited about reading

I believe the solution to making everybody happy is to give them what they want. Let's get them all rich, let's get them all fit and healthy, and then let's get them all happy.

Making money should be a function of your identity and what you like to do

The number of books you read is just a vanity metric

I don't read anymore to complete books. I read to satisfy my genuine intellectual curiosity.

Making reading an actual habit is the most important thing and how you make it habit doesn't matter

The smaller the company you work for, the happier you'll be

A lot of judgment is just knowing not what to do in the first place. The ability to say 'no' and be correct that that was a 'no' is a superpower. You want to be able to filter out things very efficiently, and that just comes through experience.

This pervasive nonspecific anxiety where you're just constantly on edge about everything—that comes from an unexamined life.

The day is coming when the politicians realize that these social media platforms are picking the next president... they will eventually be controlled by the government

Wisdom begets stoicism. Stoicism does not beget wisdom.

I read for understanding. So with a really good book, I'll flip through it. I won't actually read it in consecutive order. I might not even finish it. I'm looking for ideas and things that I don't understand. When I find something really interesting, I'll reflect on it, research it, and then when I'm bored of it, I'll drop it or I'll flip to another book.

If you think you're so smart, what haven't you figure out how to be happy?

Machines should be working nine to five. Humans are not meant to work nine to five.

I think people who early in life discover something like surfing or swimming or tennis or some kind of a sport that they continue doing throughout most of their life are very lucky, because they found a hobby that will make them fit

90% of my tweets are just maxims that I carve for myself that are then mental hooks to remind me when I'm in that situation again

When you combine things you're not supposed to combine, people get interested

We unconsciously pick up habits in the background and we keep them for decades. We may not even realize they’re bad for us.

Give love, but never expect it.

Meditation is one of those things that everybody says they, do but nobody actually does

Negotiations with high integrity people are usually very easy