Naval Ravikant quotes on wealth

Money doesn’t buy happiness - it buys freedom.

The measure of wealth is freedom. The measure of health is lightness. The measure of intellect is judgment. The measure of wisdom is silence. The measure of love is peace.

If you need a degree to do it, it’s not going to make you wealthy.

You’re spending time to save money when you should be spending money to save time.

The ideal school would teach health, wealth, and happiness. It‘d be free, self-paced, and available to all. It‘d show opposing ideas and students would self-verify truth. No grades, no tests, no diplomas - just learning. Actually, you’re already here. Careful who you follow.

Earn with your mind, not with your time.

You want to be rich and anonymous, not poor and famous.

A society that believes that wealth is created through luck or privilege will eat itself alive.

You don’t get rich by spending your time to save money. You get rich by saving your time to make money.

People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can’t fathom.

Retirement starts when you stop sacrificing today for some imaginary tomorrow. You retire by saving up enough money, becoming a monk, or by finding work that feels like play to you.

Trade money for time, not time for money. You’re going to run out of time first.

If you want to be wealthy, spend your time relaxing, or earning. Outsource or ignore everything else.

Status games are multiplayer, zero-sum, hierarchical, judged socially. Get grades, applause, titles now - emptiness later. Natural games are single player, positive-sum, internal, judged by nature/markets. Pay in pain now - get wealth, health, knowledge, peace, family later.

You’re never going to get rich renting out your time.

Get wealthy, get healthy, get happy.

Money does buy happiness, if you earned it.

Better billionaires than kings.

Making money through an early lucky trade is the worst way to win. The bad habits that it reinforces will lead to a lifetime of losses.

The two kinds of people - those who want money, and those who want status.

Wealth creation is an evolutionarily recent positive-sum game. Status is an old zero-sum game. Those attacking wealth creation are often just seeking status.

Money isn’t an invention. It isn’t even a discovery. It’s intrinsic to the human species. It’s how we keep track of debts with strangers, and cooperate across genetic boundaries - something no other species can do.

If you don't own a piece of a business, you don't have a path towards financial freedom.

A well-designed market for betting on climate change would allow the communities at greatest risk to buy insurance and literally transfer wealth from the ignorant to the knowledgeable.

It’s increasingly clear that the wealth and power of any given nation state will be proportional to its ability to create and utilize new technology.

Smart money is just dumb money that's been through a crash.

Money is energy, one step removed. We will always expend energy to obtain it, distribute it, and secure it, whether it’s via aircraft carriers, central bankers or data centers. The energy expenditure can be masked but not removed. Someone will spend 99 cents to take a dollar.

Rich people get paid by the project and pay by the hour.

Optimize for control over money, and you’ll make more money.

We were promised material abundance, but instead we got digital scarcity. (nanotech vs. blockchains)

Making money is not a thing that you do - it's a skill that you learn.

Put your money where your mind is.

First, earning power went from physical to digital. Now assets and security are going from physical to digital. Human rights must follow.

Some economic patterns recur, inexactly, less than once a generation. These are when the greatest fortunes are made and lost.

Society, business & money are downstream of technology, which is itself downstream of science. Science applied is the engine of humanity.

If you kept stacking on debt your entire life, it would end badly. But we are told it's ok for countries. Macroeconomics is voodoo.

Ethics is what you do despite the money. If being ethical were profitable, everyone would do it.

Besides labor, which is fought over in the status hierarchy, leverage stems from technology. From tools to money to the printing press to the PC. The latest is the “permissionlessly-programmable network.” Starting with the open Internet and now blockchain market-networks.