Navalism – Quotes & Perceptions by Naval Ravikant

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

“A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought — they must be earned.”- Naval Ravikant

“Smart money is just dumb money that’s been through a crash.”- Naval Ravikant

“The secret to public speaking is to speak as if you were alone.”- Naval Ravikant

“Sophisticated foods are bittersweet (wine, beer, coffee, chocolate). Addictive relationships are cooperative and competitive. Work becomes flow at the limits of ability. The flavor of life is on the edge.”- Naval Ravikant

“Technology is not only the thing that moves the human race forward, but it’s the only thing that ever has. Without technology, we’re just monkeys playing in the dirt.”- Naval Ravikant

“The fundamental delusion — there is something out there that will make me happy and fulfilled forever.”- Naval Ravikant

“Success is the enemy of learning. It can deprive you of the time and the incentive to start over. Beginner’s mind also needs beginner’s time.”- Naval Ravikant

“Don’t debate people in the media when you can debate them in the marketplace.”- Naval Ravikant

“A contrarian isn’t one who always objects — that’s a conformist of a different sort. A contrarian reasons independently, from the ground up, and resists pressure to conform.”- Naval Ravikant

“The real struggle isn’t proletariat vs bourgeois. It’s between high-status elites and wealthy elites. When their cooperation breaks, revolution.”- Naval Ravikant

“Branding requires accountability. To build a great personal brand (an eponymous one), you must take on the risk of being publicly wrong.”- Naval Ravikant

“Before you can lie to another, you must first lie to yourself.”- Naval Ravikant

“Wealth creation is an evolutionarily recent positive-sum game. Status is an old zero-sum game. Those attacking wealth creation are often just seeking status.”- Naval Ravikant

“Even today, what to study and how to study it are more important than where to study it and for how long. The best teachers are on the Internet. The best books are on the Internet. The best peers are on the Internet. The tools for learning are abundant. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce.”- Naval Ravikant

“This is such a short and precious life that it’s really important that you don’t spend it being unhappy.”- Naval Ravikant

“You make your own luck if you stay at it long enough.”- Naval Ravikant

“The power to make and break habits and learning how to do that is really important.”- Naval Ravikant

“Happiness is a choice and a skill and you can dedicate yourself to learning that skill and making that choice.”- Naval Ravikant

“We’re not really here for that long and we don’t really matter that much. And nothing that we do lasts. So eventually you will fade. Your works will fade. Your children will fade. Your thoughts will fade. This planet will fade. The sun will fade. It will all be gone.”- Naval Ravikant

“A rational person can find peace by cultivating indifference to things outside of their control.”- Naval Ravikant

“The first rule of handling conflict is don’t hang around people who are constantly engaging in conflict.”- Naval Ravikant

“The problem happens when we have multiple desires. When we have fuzzy desires. When we want to do ten different things and we’re not clear about which is the one we care about.”- Naval Ravikant

“People spend too much time doing and not enough time thinking about what they should be doing.”- Naval Ravikant

“The people who succeed are irrationally passionate about something.”- Naval Ravikant

“If you see a get rich quick scheme, that’s someone else trying to get rich off of you.”- Naval Ravikant

“If you try to micromanage yourself all you’re going to do is make yourself miserable.”- Naval Ravikant

“Social media has degenerated into a deafening cacophony of groups signaling and repeating their shared myths.”- Naval Ravikant

“If it entertains you now but will bore you someday, it’s a distraction. Keep looking.”- Naval Ravikant

“If the primary purpose of school was education, the Internet should obsolete it. But school is mainly about credentialing.”- Naval Ravikant

“Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.”- Naval Ravikant

“Technology is applied science. Science is the study of nature. Mathematics is the language of nature. Philosophy is the root of mathematics. All tightly interrelated.”- Naval Ravikant

“Be present above all else.”- Naval Ravikant

“All the benefits in life come from compound interest — money, relationships, habits — anything of importance.”- Naval Ravikant

“Who you do business with is just as important as what you choose to do.”- Naval Ravikant

“If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day.”- Naval Ravikant

“Earn with your mind, not your time.”- Naval Ravikant

“Humans are basically habit machines… I think learning how to break habits is actually a very important meta-skill and can serve you in life almost better than anything else.”- Naval Ravikant

“The older the problem, the older the solution.”- Naval Ravikant

“It’s the mark of a charlatan to try and explain simple things in complex ways and it’s the mark of a genius to explain complicated things in simple ways.”- Naval Ravikant

“The Efficient Markets Hypothesis fails because humans are herd animals, not independent rational actors. Thus the best investors tend to be antisocial and contrarian.”- Naval Ravikant

“People who try to look smart by pointing out obvious exceptions actually signal the opposite.”- Naval Ravikant

“You’re never going to get rich renting out your time.”- Naval Ravikant

“Lots of literacy in modern society, but not enough numeracy.”- Naval Ravikant

“Above product-market fit is founder-product-market fit.”- Naval Ravikant

“Society has had multiple stores of value, as none is perfectly secure. Gold, oil, dollars, real estate, (some) bonds & equities. Crypto is the first that’s decentralized *and* digital.”- Naval Ravikant

“Crypto is a bet against the modern macroeconomic dogma, which is passed off as science, but is really a branch of politics — with rulers, winners, and losers.”- Naval Ravikant

“Clear thinkers appeal to their own authority.”- Naval Ravikant

“Think clearly from the ground up. Understand and explain from first principles. Ignore society and politics. Acknowledge what you have. Control your emotions.”- Naval Ravikant

“Cynicism is easy. Mimicry is easy. Optimistic contrarians are the rarest breed.”- Naval Ravikant

“If they can train you to do it, then eventually they will train a computer to do it.”- Naval Ravikant

“If you’re desensitized to the fact that you’re going to die, consider it a different way. As far as you’re concerned, this world is going to end. Now what?”- Naval Ravikant

“Following your genuine intellectual curiosity is a better foundation for a career than following whatever is making money right now.”- Naval Ravikant

“Objectively, the world is improving. To the elites, it’s falling apart as their long-lived institutions are flattened by the Internet.”- Naval Ravikant

“A personal metric: how much of the day is spent doing things out of obligation rather than out of interest?”- Naval Ravikant

“Caught in a funk? Use meditation, music, and exercise to reset your mood. Then choose a new path to commit emotional energy for rest of day.”- Naval Ravikant

“To be honest, speak without identity.”- Naval Ravikant

“A rational person can find peace by cultivating indifference to things outside of their control.”- Naval Ravikant

“Politics is sports writ large — pick a side, rally the tribe, exchange stories confirming bias, hurl insults and threats at the other side.”- Naval Ravikant

“People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can’t fathom.”- Naval Ravikant

“We feel guilt when we no longer want to associate with old friends and colleagues who haven’t changed. The price, and marker, of growth.”- Naval Ravikant

“The most important trick to be happy is to realize that happiness is a choice that you make and a skill that you develop. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. It’s just like building muscles.”- Naval Ravikant

“Don’t do things that you know are morally wrong. Not because someone is watching, but because you are. Self-esteem is just the reputation that you have with yourself.”- Naval Ravikant

“Anger is a hot coal that you hold in your hand while waiting to throw it at someone else. (Buddhist saying)”- Naval Ravikant

“If you can’t see yourself working with someone else for life, don't work with them for a day.”- Naval Ravikant

“All the real benefits of life come from compound interest.”- Naval Ravikant

“Total honesty at all times. It’s almost always possible to be honest & positive.”- Naval Ravikant

“Truth is that which has predictive power.”- Naval Ravikant

“Watch every thought. Always ask, why am I having this thought?”- Naval Ravikant

“All greatness comes from suffering.”- Naval Ravikant

“Love is given, not received.”- Naval Ravikant

“Enlightenment is the space between your thoughts.”- Naval Ravikant

“Mathematics is the language of nature.”- Naval Ravikant

“Every moment has to be complete in and of itself.”- Naval Ravikant

“So I have no time for short-term things: dinners with people I won’t see again, tedious ceremonies to please tedious people, traveling to places that I wouldn’t go to on vacation.”- Naval Ravikant

“You can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it. What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you would change it but not changing it, wishing you would leave it but not leaving it, and not accepting it. It’s that struggle, that aversion, that is responsible for most of our misery. The phrase that I use the most to myself in my head is one word: accept.”- Naval Ravikant

“I don’t have time is just saying it’s not a priority.”- Naval Ravikant

“Happiness is a state where nothing is missing.”- Naval Ravikant

“If you don’t love yourself, who will?”- Naval Ravikant

“If being ethical were profitable everybody would do it.”- Naval Ravikant

“Someone who is using a lot of fancy words and big concepts probably doesn’t know what they’re talking about. The smartest people can explain things to a child; if you can’t do that, you don’t understand the concept.”- Naval Ravikant

“Escape competition through authenticity.”- Naval Ravikant

-amazing roundup by Noah Madden, republished with permission-