Top 105 Peter Diamandis Quotes

People need to understand how exponential technologies are impacting the business landscape. They need to do some future-casting and look at how industries are evolving and being transformed.

The old newspaper adage, ‘If it bleeds, it leads,’ is as true today as it was a century ago.

There was a Gallup poll that said something like 70 percent of people in the United States do not enjoy their job – they work to put food on the table and get insurance to survive. So, what happens when technology can do all that work for us and allow us to actually do what we enjoy with our time?

Have an open mind – allow different ideas into your way of thinking.

Today, the smartphone in your pocket has a high-quality digital camera. Everyone – not just artists – is a photographer, and the explosion of photos taken annually proves it.

From a scientific point of view, we now know that the water is interlaced with the lunar soil in many locations, perhaps as remnants of comet collisions with the lunar surface.

The Department of Energy made an investment that failed, and it got raked over the coals for that failed investment. This is ridiculous. The fact of the matter is, the government should be making a lot of risky investments, the majority of which are likely to fail.

Many have built their careers buttressing the status quo, reinforcing what they’ve already accomplished, and resisting the radical thinking that can topple their legacy – not exactly the attitude you want when trying to drive innovation forward.

When hiring, trust your feelings.

I was seeing a lot of entrepreneurs who were effectively working on the next photo-sharing app. I wanted to inspire them to go much bigger, bolder and more significant than that.

My childhood dreams were focused on being part of the effort to make humanity a multiplanetary species.

Nothing is more precious than life… especially the life of your child.

If you stop and think about it, the form of propulsion used today hasn’t changed in over a thousand years… since the invention of fireworks by the Chinese.

I think we’re heading towards a world of what I call ‘technological socialism.’ Where technology – not the government or the state – will begin to take care of us. Technology will provide our healthcare for free. The best education in the world – for free.

We live in a world bathed in 5,000 times more energy than we consume as a species in the year, in the form of solar energy. It’s just not in usable form yet.

Never tolerate a toxic person in your organization.

I had started Zero-G specifically to broaden the public for access to weightlessness.

It’s now possible to have your body 3D-imaged from head to toe at a sub-millimeter accuracy, showing every ripple of muscle or cellulite, to allow the perfect-fitting jeans or shoes.

With faster Internet and better computers, you’d better believe we’re creating and consuming more digital data.

Incentive prizes work.

Three hundred years ago, during the Age of Enlightenment, the coffee house became the center of innovation.

In 1750, 75 percent of people on the planet worked to support the top 25 percent.

If you’ve been wondering where the next gold rush is going to take place, look up at the night sky to our closest celestial neighbor. The next economic boom might just be a mere 240,000 miles away on the bella luna.

The goal of my work is to help assure that we can create a world of abundance in which we meet the basic needs of every man, woman and child.

As lower-cost phones begin to penetrate, they’ll become the educator and physician everywhere on the planet.

If the government regulates against use of drones or stem cells or artificial intelligence, all that means is that the work and the research leave the borders of that country and go someplace else.

I live in L.A., where every coffee shop is filled with scriptwriters, producers and directors.

All of us are linear thinkers. We evolved in a world that was local and linear. You know, back 100,000, 200,000, millions of years ago, when we were evolving as a human species, nothing changed. You know, the life of your great-grandparents, you, your kids – it was the same. And so we are local and linear thinkers.

The world’s biggest problems are the world’s biggest market opportunities. And that’s a huge thing. Solve hunger, literacy and energy problems, get the gratitude of the world and become a billionaire in the process.

Large-scale philanthropy, based in the private – not the public – sector, is a relatively recent historical development.

Drones watch for disease and collect real-time data on crop health and yields.

I think about the Internet and cell phones and jets and spaceships, and I wonder, ‘What’s going to make that look ancient?’

Remember when vacation photos meant toting along a bulky camera?

If you’re the CEO of a publicly traded company, you’re worried about quarterly returns.

Eight billion people will have Internet access by 2020.

You might hear people decry the loss of privacy in today’s world, but radical transparency is dramatically reducing violence everywhere. Most violent things happen in the dark when no one’s watching, whether it’s an oppressive dictator or someone causing violence in the inner city.

A dapper Canadian in his mid-fifties, Rob McEwen bought the disparate collection of gold mining companies known as Goldcorp in 1989. A decade later, he’d unified those companies and was ready for expansion – a process he wanted to start by building a new refinery.

By 2030, just a small percentage of the global population will live in poverty.

I think people are dreaming big because they have the tools to dream big. I hope that people are dreaming big because it makes them feel good about their lives.

The challenge is that the day before something is truly a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea. And crazy ideas are very risky to attempt.

The rate of innovation is a function of the total number of people connected and exchanging ideas. It has gone up as population has gone up. It’s gone up as people have concentrated in cities.

Mining asteroids will ultimately benefit humanity on and off the Earth in a multitude of ways.

Your mission is to find a product or service that can positively impact the lives of 1 billion people because that’s the game we’re playing today.

Revealing water in significant quantities on the Moon could truly be a turning point in space exploration.

After more than a decade as the editor of ‘Wired’ magazine, Chris Anderson started the company of his dreams – a robotics manufacturing company called 3D Robotics – to produce the autonomous flying vehicles coming out of DIY Drones.

There are nearly one billion illiterate people on Earth.

I think that we’re living in a time where there are trillion-dollar opportunities that never existed before.

In most developed countries, the average person receives about 16 years of education. Even in developing countries, the population gets five to eight years of education.

Online games for data-mining have a short virtual shelf life. People get bored, especially if the game seems stagnant.

Millions of years ago, our brains became wired to remember about 150 people as ‘close friends.’

I think the folks who go after grand challenges are impatient.

As education becomes dematerialized, demonetized and democratized, every man, woman and child on the planet will be able to reap the benefits of knowledge. We’re rapidly heading toward a world of education abundance.

The constant monitoring of our emotional landscape and personal interactions is a bizarre concept. But it is one that could help many people.

When I talk about taking bold actions in the world, few things are bolder than creating the ‘Huffington Post‘ from scratch and reinventing the newspaper business.

Now the amygdala is our early warning detector, our danger detector. It sorts and scours through all of the information looking for anything in the environment that might harm us. So given a dozen news stories, we will preferentially look at the negative news.

It used to be that the only ones with access to cutting-edge technology were top government labs, big companies and the ultra-rich. It was simply too expensive for the rest of us to afford.

Nothing matters more than your health. Healthy living is priceless. What millionaire wouldn’t pay dearly for an extra 10 or 20 years of healthy aging?

I founded a launch company called International Microspace when I graduated medical school in 1989. We were trying to build a microsatellite launcher.

It’s easy to forget that for centuries – for millennia – the ‘workforce‘ was all of us.

Many entrepreneurs that made their fortunes by founding successful technology companies want to give back and solve the world’s biggest problems on a grand scale. There is tremendous opportunity in this approach.

The Net is allowing us to turn ourselves into a giant, collective meta-intelligence. And this meta-intelligence continues to grow as more and more people come online.

As I’ve conducted my interviews with crowdsourcing entrepreneurs and experts, it’s constantly hit me that your ability to do something big and bold is really a function of the size and quality of your crowd.

When I think about creating abundance, it’s not about creating a life of luxury for everybody on this planet; it’s about creating a life of possibility. It is about taking that which was scarce and making it abundant.

Never before in history has the global marketplace touched so many consumers and provided access to so many producers.

If the idea is really new and unique and big, other people will all think it is bad and is going to fail.

In 1980, it cost just under $600 to take a round-trip flight within the United States.

It’s never been easier to share your ideas and passions with the world.

Did you know that Kodak actually invented the digital camera that ultimately put it out of business? Kodak had the patents and a head start, but ignored all that.

At the turn of the 20th century, the disparity in literacy here in the U.S. largely came down to race. Nearly half of minorities at that time – 45 percent – were illiterate, while 94 percent of white citizens were literate.

Learning how to understand how technology evolves, using tools like a Technology Road Map, is what you need more than anything to ride on top of the tsunami instead of being crushed by it.

One thing that humans still do better than computers is recognize images.

Companies have too many experts who block innovation. True innovation really comes from perpendicular thinking.

I collect a lot of data. We all do.

Your chances of dying a violent death are 1/500th of what they used to be during medieval times.

As of 2011, it cost about $5,000 to launch a tech startup.

I think about things like, ‘Will my kids need a college account? Will they even go to college?’ I don’t know if that will be the case.

Visual artists use drones to capture beautiful new images and camera angles.

Even in an organization that’s doing something big and bold, there’s the mundane, day-to-day execution work of keeping it going. But people need to stay connected to the boldness, to the vision, and stay plugged in to the main vein of the dream.

Space is an inspirational concept that allows you to dream big.

I have the general philosophy of creating the future you want to see.

Super-ambitious goals tend to be unifying and energizing to people; but only if they believe there’s a chance of success.

Since the age of 6, I’ve always wanted to go to space.

Elon Musk with PayPal revolutionized banking.

Human exploration is something that’s been going on for thousands of years, and the models that worked 500 years ago are likely to work again today.

Paul Allen with Microsoft revolutionized the software industry.

If the risk is fully aligned with your purpose and mission, then it’s worth considering.

Making things open-source brings the cost down.

So while I can’t tell you if bringing a child into this world is the morally-responsible to do, I can say that the future, much like the present, is going to be a whole lot better than you think.

Now, we connect via Skype or Google+ Hangout and see our friends’ and loved ones‘ faces live.

The automotive X Prize, to a great degree, is focused on addressing petroleum usage and carbon emissions.

True disruption means threatening your existing product line and your past investments. Breakthrough products disrupt current lines of businesses.

I don’t think the space station is innovative. Going to the moon was innovative because we had no idea how to do it.

3D printing will massively reduce the cost of certain products as the cost of labor is removed.

I view risk-aversion as crippling America in many ways.

My father, who grew up picking olives on the Greek island of Lesbos, was a doctor. So my family expected me to become a physician.

When I was a grad student at MIT, I had a chance to become friends with the Viking Mission’s chief scientist, Dr. Gerald Soffen. Viking was the first Mars lander looking for signs of life on Mars.

The reason we care so much about what happens to the likes of Lady Gaga is not because her shenanigans will ever impact our lives; rather because our brain doesn’t realize there’s a difference between rock stars we know about and relatives we know.

As of the mid-90s, over 50 percent of women have a bachelor‘s and master‘s degree, compared to about 35 percent and 30 percent, respectively, in 1920.

We’re now able to 3D print in 200 different materials, from titanium to rubber, plastic, glass, ceramic, leathers, and even chocolate.

Old-style management is irrelevant.

When you have an employee who’s innovative in your organization, what are they thinking about in the shower? If they’re working in an exciting place, they’re not thinking what they’re going to do over the weekend. They’re thinking: ‘How do I solve that problem?’

Even a small village in the middle of Africa with a 3D printer will have access to any good it can download. The world of the ‘Star Trek‘ replicator is not far away.

Today, every skirmish in every part of the planet is broadcast straight into your living room live, in HD… over and over again.

At its core, bitcoin is a smart currency designed by very forward-thinking engineers. It eliminates the need for banks, gets rid of credit card fees, currency exchange fees, money transfer fees, and reduces the need for lawyers in transitions… all good things.

Private companies should be building businesses.