“You have to remain critically vigilant.Question every premise, challenge conventional wisdom, and never accept the truth of something merely because everyone else views it as obvious.”

“Genius feels like an over extended Helium balloon about to burst, and everyone criticizes you for not having a conventional way of coping with it.”

“• Everyone is better than you at something. If you have a tough time accepting others, it’s probably because you think you’re superior to them. However, you’re not superior to every person in every way.”

“Conventional Wisdom" is certainly not wisdom, and only is conventional because foolishness is so common today.”

“Acknowledge the complexity of the world and resist the impression that you easily understand it. People are too quick to accept conventional wisdom, because it sounds basically true and it tends to be reinforced by both their peers and opinion leaders, many of whome have never looked at whether the facts support the received wisdom. It's a basic fact of life that many things "everybody knows" turn out to be wrong.”

“[T]he mere existence of others who have radically different beliefs about the nature ofreality poses an explicit challenge to the claims of absolute truth made on behalf of one’s ownpoint of view, thus undermining the anxiety-buffering capacity of that world view.”