Naval Ravikant on Success Quotes

"Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people, and products with no marginal cost of replication (code and media)."

"Code and media are permissionless leverage. They're the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep."

"Total honesty at all times. If you can’t be honest with yourself, you can’t be honest with anyone else."

"Embrace accountability, and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage."

"The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner."

"Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now."

"Specific knowledge is often highly technical or creative. It cannot be outsourced or automated."

"Set and enforce an aspirational personal hourly rate. If fixing a problem will save less than your hourly rate, ignore it."

"Don’t partner with cynics and pessimists. Their beliefs are self-fulfilling."

"Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life. Choose the difficult path now."

"If you want to make the maximum amount of money, you have to take the maximum amount of risk early on."

"Work as hard as you can. Even though who you work with and what you work on are more important than how hard you work."

"When you’re finally wealthy, you’ll realize that it wasn’t what you were seeking in the first place."

"Hard work is not enough. You need to work hard on the right things."

"Specific knowledge is the knowledge that you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else, and replace you."

"Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete, in and of itself, you’re retired."

"There are no fast schemes. That’s just someone else getting rich off of you."

"Decision making is everything. In an age of leverage, one correct decision can win everything."

"Play long-term games with long-term people. All returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest."

"The only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life."

"If you want to be successful, you have to have the confidence to fail in public."

"Apply specific knowledge, with leverage, and eventually you will get what you deserve."

"Forty hour work weeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes - train and sprint, then rest and reassess."

"Play iterated games. All the returns in life come from compound interest."

"Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others."

"The more authentic you are, the less competition you have. You are the only person who can be you."

"Reading is faster than listening. Doing is faster than watching."

"You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale."

"You should be too busy to ‘do coffee,’ while still keeping an uncluttered calendar."

"Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage."

"The most successful people are those who have figured out how to be themselves."

"If you can’t code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts."

"Pick an industry where you can play long term games with long term people."