You have to believe that you are the one who creates your success, that you are the one who creates your mediocrity, and that you are the one creating your struggle around money and success.
Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.
If you are a cooperative animal, you need to watch what you get. If you, or even a whole community, invest in something but then a few individuals receive a much larger return, it's not a good arrangement. If it happens consistently, it's time to look for an arrangement that is more beneficial. That's why we're so sensitive to how rewards are being divided.
You should know as much as you can about the human species if you have a hand in designing human society. I'm not saying that you can derive moral rules from nature - that's deriving an ought from an is, as the philosophers say - but you do need to know what kind of animals we are if you want to design a stable society.
Humanity is actually much more cooperative and empathic than [it's] given credit for.
Armies are a purely human invention. Most soldiers who go to war nowadays don't even do it because they're inherently aggressive.
If you want to design a successful human society, you need to know what kind of animal we are. Are we a social animal or a selfish animal? Do we respond better when we're solitary or living in a group?
The only way to get ahead is to find errors in conventional wisdom.
People only have true understanding when they look at everything from God's perspective. Authentic wisdom begins when we understand that God is to be the object of our devotion, our adoration, and our reverence.
For instance, in 1999, Bill Gates not only published a new book on work at the speed of thought but also detailed how Microsoft's 'Falconview' software would enable the destruction of bridges in Kosovo.
Pessimism is a very easy way out because it is a short view of life. If you look at what is happening around us today, you can't help but feel that life is a terrible complexity of problems. But if you look back a few thousand years, you realize that we have advanced fantastically. If you take a long view, I do not see how you can be pessimistic about the future of mankind.