A quote from Mark Cuban

A quote by Roger Federer

"There is no way around hard work. Embrace it."

'Everybody has talent and it's just a matter of moving around until you've discovered what it is. A talent is a combination of something you love a great deal and something you can lose yourself in.'

- George Lucas (1944-present)

A quote from Robin Williams

"There’s no shame in failing. The only shame is not giving things your best shot."

A quote by athlete Walter Payton

"When you're good at something, you'll tell everyone. When you're great at something, they'll tell you."

A Quote by Sandra Day O'Connor

"Do the best you can in every task, no matter how unimportant it may seem at the time."

A quote by Magic Johnson

"Celebrate the life you had, not the life you could've had."

'In my experience, each failure contains the seeds of your next success—if you are willing to learn from it.'

- Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen (1953–2018)

A quote by award-winning actor Tom Hanks

"We are still in the position of waking up and having a choice. Do I make the world better today somehow, or do I not bother?"

A quote by Howard Hughes

"Do the impossible, because almost everyone has told me my ideas are merely fantasies."

'Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise.'

- Ted Turner, on his secret to success (1938-2026)

The best predictor of success.

Leaving a high-flying job in consulting, Angela Lee Duckworth took a job teaching math to seventh graders in a New York public school. She quickly realized that IQ wasn’t the only thing separating successful students from those who struggled. Here, she explains her theory of “grit."

'Mediocrity is always invisible until passion shows up and exposes it'

- Graham Cooke

"Guessing what the pitcher is going to throw is 80 percent of being a successful hitter. The other 20 percent is just execution."

- Baseball star Hank Aaron (1934-2021)

'Without goals, training has no direction.'

- Twelve-time Olympic swimming medalist Natalie Coughlin (1982-present)

'Years ago, I tried to top everybody, but I don't anymore. I realized it was killing conversation. When you're always trying for a topper you aren't really listening.'

- Comedian Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

Watch Ray Dalio's TED Talk on building an 'idea meritocracy'

In 2017, Dalio gave a TED Talk called "How to Build a Company Where the Best Ideas Win," which largely focused on Bridgewater's highly documented company culture and leadership principles. Dalio's TED Talk focused on one of his most well-known principles, "radical transparency," as a way to create an idea meritocracy.

Hustle culture is what happens when the belief that working extremely hard will put people on the path to success becomes the norm in a workplace or other group

From pulling all-nighters at the office to never taking a weekend off, hustle culture has been known to lead to employee burnout. The Worklife with Adam Grant podcast explains hustle culture and its effects in depth in this episode.

CEO Gary Tan explains Y Combinators guiding philosophy

Hear YC President and CEO Garry Tan talk about why he values earnesty and excellent communication skills in YC founders, his thoughts on AI, and more in this unexpectedly deep and in-depth interview.

Martha Graham on preparation and discipline

This clip from the 1957 documentary "A Dancer's World" features the dancer explaining why she's committed all of her energy to her art. "Spontaneity … is something arrived at over years and years of training," she says, "it is not a mere chance."

The dot-com boom made Mark Cuban a billionaire

Cuban co-founded AudioNet with Todd Wagner in 1995 before it became Broadcast.com—a web app that allowed people to listen to sports commentary on their computers if they couldn't watch a game. In 1999, Yahoo bought Broadcast.com for $5.7B. By the time the market crashed, Cuban had already sold most of his stock in the company and had become a billionaire.

How legendary artists overcame creative block

For most artists, creative block—the unfortunate experience when new ideas suddenly disappear—is inevitable. This Artsy article looks at six artists (including Picasso, Monet, and O’Keeffe) who dealt with creative block and overcame it by experimenting with new media, moving to a new place, or by sheer willpower. It also highlights one artist, Chuck Close, who claims that he never dealt with creative block because he simply viewed his artistic practice as any other job.

Warren Buffett’s investing advice includes never paying too high a price for any investment

Buffett is perhaps the greatest investor of all time, and his investing philosophies are highly regarded and practiced around the world. His advice also includes investing in productive assets (like stocks, bonds, and real estate) and imagining what could go wrong before thinking about how much money you could make.

Stephen King doesn't believe writing can be taught

But he does believe it can be learned. He argues that the best writers are "voracious readers" who start their careers by copying the style of the masters before developing their own.

NFL Draft decisions are shaped by brain science, data, and office culture

Carnegie Mellon researchers say Draft-room choices are influenced by the "jackpot effect"—where higher stakes can impair performance—as well as by groupthink, the limits of data, and whether scouts feel safe speaking up.

Elon Musk follows a five-step decision-making process when simplifying technology

He begins by determining whether how something has been previously done is—in his words—"dumb," or if a certain feature should even exist, let alone be optimized. This first principles method has helped him develop some of the most valuable companies in the world.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

Watch this video that uses Lego bricks to explain how venture capital works.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

Watch how algorithms can be designed to train themselves and self-improve without human input, to the point where the optimized code is too complex for programmers to understand.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

Use this calculator to find the dollar value of your mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care for your children.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

Studies suggest when you sleep is as important as how much you get, and syncing with your circadian rhythms may lead to less fatigue and improved long-term health outcomes

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

Despite being favored by 87% of Americans, Congress does not have term limits.

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

How fusion—which releases energy when two lighter atoms combine to form a heavier atom—differs from fission

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.