Reid Hoffman

“PayPal was disruptive, it was democratizing, and it had universal appeal. It gave power to millions and millions of individuals and reduced monopolist control from nations, banks, and other huge corporations.”

“Even by Silicon Valley standards, PayPal's vision was massively ambitious.”

“If Trump's actions as President reflect his campaign rhetoric, the ACLU and other capable organizations like it will be critical for defending the Bill of Rights for all Americans.”

“If you could train an AI to be a Buddhist, it would probably be pretty good.”

“I would have volunteered to work at Netscape. It was the center node of this new technology and the commercial ecosystem of the Internet.”

“The way you deal with bullies is you change their economic equation. Make it more expensive for them to hassle you.”

“We need to invest in technologies that amplify human capacity, not replace it.”

“I'm a little unusual: I'm a six-person-or-less extrovert.”

“Death Row inmates are almost twice as expensive to house each year as other inmates. Death penalty trials are much costlier than trials where execution is not a potential punishment and consume more time from judges, public defenders, and other legal personnel.”

“Our polling methodology has gotten outdated, and, in fact, it's not really telling us what it needs to be telling us.”

“Relatively few people should start companies.”

“And people who take risk intelligently can usually actually make a lot more progress than people who don't.”

“The world's better off the more Silicon Valleys there are and the more scaled companies there are.”

“Observe, orient, decide, act. It's fighter pilot terminology. If you have the faster OODA loop in a dogfight, you live. The other person dies. In Silicon Valley, the OODA loop of your decision-making is effectively what differentiates your ability to succeed.”

“In the past, individuals and companies envisioned a lifetime mutual commitment. That's not realistic anymore - nor is it in the interest of either party. So both parties need a more adaptable way to engage each other and co-invest over shorter periods of time for mutual benefit.”

“To have your parents get divorced at a young age, there's a lot of turbulence. We all grew up together, in some way. It was not idyllic. It was intense, vibrant, sometimes oppressive. I felt I was very much in a world of my own. I didn't meld much in school. I was kind of a loner.”

“One of the things that happens that's challenging within the democratic process is that people say, 'Look at this failure, so we should totally change this whole thing.' And then you add in tons of bureaucratic process and checks and balances, and all of a sudden, it doesn't work that well.”

“So benevolent, enlightened, wise dictators are the most efficient form of government. The problem is what comes afterwards, right?”

“There's a lot of people in the world that would love to trade places with American citizens, and we are very fortunate to be here.”

“Any effort to make the death penalty speedier and less costly - more 'efficient' - will inevitably make it less just.”