Peter Thiel Education Quotes & Sayings

Our schools teach the opposite: institutionalized education traffics in a kind of homogenized, generic knowledge. Everybody who passes through the American school system learns not to think in power law terms. Every high school course period lasts 45 minutes whatever the subject. Every student proceeds at a similar pace. At college, model students obsessively hedge their futures by assembling a suite of exotic and minor skills. Every university believes in "excellence," and hundred-page course catalogs arranged alphabetically according to arbitrary departments of knowledge seem designed to reassure you that "it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you do it well." That is completely false. It does matter what you do. You should focus relentlessly on something you're good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future. — Peter Thiel

When we shrink from the sight of something, when we shroud it in euphemism, that is usually a sign of inner conflict, of unsettled hearts, a sign that something has gone wrong in our moral reasoning. — Matthew Scully

I really, really love children and I think probably among children is when I feel mostly berated. It's not like I feel like oh, there's some children here. I have to tone it down. I go nuts with children especially when I ain't got none. So when I'm round my mates' children, I jest them kids up first. I swear at them, I get more worked up, I say crazy stuff to them, fill their heads with nonsense and then I leave them. — Russell Brand

A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed. Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It's like telling the world there's no Santa Claus. — Peter Thiel

Education is a bubble in a classic sense. To call something a bubble, it must be overpriced, and there must be an intense belief in it. — Peter Thiel

I'm skeptical of a lot of what falls under the rubric of education ... People are on these tracks. They are getting these credentials and it's very unclear how viable they are in many cases. — Peter Thiel

Peanut Butter M&Ms in the fridge, I always have a giant bag. Every cookie and candy I put in the fridge, it always manages to taste better when it's cold. — Hilary Rhoda

By the time a student gets to college, he's spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse resume to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he's ready--for nothing in particular. — Peter Thiel

Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consulting and investment banking. For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves? — Peter Thiel

Education needs to be rethought. Education does not just happen in college, but it also happens in developing skills which will enable people to contribute to our society as a whole. — Peter Thiel

No witch has ever claimed to own the Elder Wand. Make of that what you will. — J.K. Rowling

If you borrowed money and went to a college where the education didn't create any value, that is potentially a really big mistake. — Peter Thiel

He sometimes felt himself to be a painfully prosaic person, but by the same token he knew he was incurably sane. — G.K. Chesterton

I had a good experience in college, but I don't think interdisciplinary education is something that's stressed very much at all. It's generally considered to be something of a bad idea. — Peter Thiel

Higher education holds itself out as a kind of universal church, outside of which there is no salvation. — Peter Thiel

When parents have invested enormous amounts of money in their kids' education, to find their kids coming back to live with them - well, that was not what they bargained for. — Peter Thiel

I don't see you holdin no aces. — Cormac McCarthy

Beyond the reach of human rage
A drop of hell, a touch of strange ... — Stephen King