Tom Schmidt

• Humility is mostly about being very honest about how much you owe to luck.

• Every mistake is an opportunity to improvise.

• Forget diamonds; explore the worlds hidden in pebbles. Seek the things that everyone else ignores.

• If you need emergency help from a bystander, command them what to do. By giving them an assignment, you transform them from bewildered bystander to a responsible assistant.

• Your decisions will become wiser when you consider these three words: “...and then what?” for each choice.

• There should be at least one thing in your life you enjoy despite being no good at it. This is your play time, which will keep you young. Never apologize for it.

• The best way to criticize something is to make something better.

"You don’t need to be smarter than others to outperform them if you can out-position them. Anyone looks like a genius when they’re in a good position, and even the smartest person looks like an idiot when they’re in a bad one."

the kind of people who are, at best, loved by a handful and tolerated by the rest.

Every complaint about you is also a commercial for you—after all, nobody bothers to yell at a nobody.