I still regard adventure pretty much as a hobby to tell you the honest truth, and I think this approach to it keeps one refreshed almost. I think if you just regard adventure as a business, working becomes very boring as many other businesses can become. But even though adventure changed my life considerably, both in what I was doing and even economically, I’ve always regarded myself in a sense as a competent amateur.

But I am not looking to any accounts, and I’m not interested at all how many money I have in the bank, what is costing this or that. I’m only trying to realize my ideas.

The highest form that civilization can reach is a seamless web of deserved trust. Not much procedure, just totally reliable people correctly trusting one another. That's the way an operating room works at the Mayo Clinic. If a bunch of lawyers were to introduce a lot of process, the patients would all die. So never forget, when you're a lawyer, that you may be rewarded for selling this stuff, but you don't have to buy it. In your own life, what you want is a seamless web of deserved trust. And if your proposed marriage contract has forty-seven pages, my suggestion is you not enter.

I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. Its name is freedom.

CEOs are pinch hitters. We should be working on the things that nobody else can or nobody else is.

So problem meetings or idea meetings or brainstorming meetings or creation meetings or whatever it is. Those are the meetings I go to.

I begin each morning, I do every single morning exactly the same way, I begin each morning by doing my highest priority work first. I have a very clear priority list and I start from the highest priority work first. Before I even get to work, my day is already a success. I've already completed my most important work and can dedicate my day to helping others.

I’d rather be a market maker, market creator than a market taker. You know, to create something new that never existed before versus thinking about share.

One setback after another, we shook it off and skated to the next opportunity. Each time, we gain skills and strengthen our character. No setback that comes our way doesn't look like an opportunity these days.

they worked hard. They work hard today. So they passed along a lot of life lessons by working hard.