Quotes from Peter Thiel

The model of the U.S. economy is that we are the country that does new things.

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?'

Every correct answer is necessarily a secret: something important and unknown, something hard to do but doable.

Contrarian thinking doesn't make any sense unless the world still has secrets left to give up.

When I was starting out, I followed along the path that seemed to be marked out for me - from high school to college to law school to professional life.

Don't bother starting the 10,000th restaurant in Manhattan. Find something to do that if you don't do it, it won't get done.

Properly defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future.

One of my first investments was $100,000 in a Web-based calendar startup - and I lost every dollar.

There is a sort of genre of optimistic science fiction that I like, and I don't think there is enough of. One of my favourites is a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, 'The City and the Stars.' It's set in this far future on Earth in this somewhat static society and trying to break out.

I would consider myself a rather staunch libertarian.

In the '30s, the Keynesian stuff worked at least in the sense that you could print money without inflation because there was all this productivity growth happening. That's not going to work today.

We cannot take for granted that the future will be better, and that means we need to work to create it today.

Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.

If you do something new, it will always look a little bit strange.

Seventy percent of the planet is covered with water, and there's so much we can be doing with oceans, and it was one of the frontiers that people have more or less abandoned.

When I moved to Cleveland, defense research was laying the foundations for the Internet. The Apollo program was just about to put a man on the moon - and it was Neil Armstrong, from right here in Ohio. The future felt limitless. But today, our government is broken.

Unsolved problems are where you'll find opportunity. Energy is one sector with extremely urgent unsolved problems.

In Silicon Valley, I point out that many of the more successful entrepreneurs seem to be suffering from a mild form of Asperger's where it's like you're missing the imitation, socialization gene.

If the whole U.S. was like Silicon Valley, we'd be in good shape. But now, the entire U.S. is not driven by technology, is not driven by innovation.

There's no single right place to be an entrepreneur, but certainly there's something about Silicon Valley.

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.

Creating value isn't enough - you also need to capture some of the value you create.

The most successful businesses have an idea for the future that's very different from the present - and that's not fully valued.

What nerds miss is that it takes hard work to make sales look easy.