Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel
Peter Andreas Thielis a German-American entrepreneur, venture capitalist and hedge fund manager. Thiel co-founded PayPal with Max Levchin and Elon Musk and served as its CEO. He also co-founded Palantir, of which he is chairman. He was the first outside investor in Facebook, the popular social-networking site, with a 10.2% stake acquired in 2004 for $500,000, and sits on the company's board of directors...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth11 October 1967
CountryUnited States of America
A conventional truth can be important - it's essential to learn elementary mathematics, for example - but it won't give you an edge. It's not a secret.
I think what's always important is not to be contrarian for its own sake but to really get at the truth.
I think competition can make people stronger at whatever it is they're competing on. If we're competing in some athletic event for competitive swimmers, really intensely competing, it's likely that both of us will become better, but it's also quite possible we'll lose sight of what's truly valuable.
People are spending way too much time thinking about climate change, way too little thinking about AI.
People always say you should live your life as if it were your last day. I think you should live your life as though it will go on for ever; that every day is so good that you don't want it to end.
Our society, the dominant culture doesn't like science. It doesn't like technology.
I suspect Obama did not know he was recording Angela Merkel's cell phones.
I suspect if people live a lot longer they would be retired for a somewhat longer period of time. Just the financial planning takes on a very different character.
I think it's a problem that we don't have more companies like Facebook. It shouldn't be the only company that's doing this well.
Most of 'big data' is a fraud because it is really 'dumb data.'
You can achieve difficult things, but you can't achieve the impossible.
My only claim is that not all talented people should go to college and not all talented people should do the exact same thing.
I worked at a law firm in New York very briefly.
I think society is both something that's very real and very powerful, but on the whole quite problematic.