The Most Intriguing Eric Weinstein Quotes

Eric Ross Weinstein (born October 26, 1965) is an American cultural commentator that has risen to prominence in public intellectual discussions in recent years. Originally trained as a mathematician, he is a managing director of Thiel Capital

In recent years, Eric has gained a substantial following from his great Podcast and YouTube interviews. He was also quite active on Clubhouse in early 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. More recently he has been appearing on many other podcasts as a guest. Here is my collection of my favorite things he has said – enjoy!

The Best Quotes from Eric Weinstein

“We need to realize that we know how to impart expertise, but we don’t know how to impart creativity or genius.” ― Eric Weinstein

“The fact that they are raising cap-ex shows that they expect business is strong enough to support the investment.” ― Eric Weinstein

“People are less likely to travel to Hong Kong but does that mean business is slow because of that? No, it’s because the economy hasn’t picked up.” ― Eric Weinstein

“Guidance was disappointing. Inventories and chipset shortages are still issues.” ― Eric Weinstein

“The worst of the news is behind us and if people think the sector will bounce back, investors will buy stocks ahead of that” ― Eric Weinstein

“You have to understand that the I.D.W. emerged as a response to a world where perfectly reasonable intellectuals were being regularly mislabeled by activists, institutions, and mainstream journalists with every career-ending epithet from ‘Islamophobe’ to ‘Nazi.’ ” ― Eric Weinstein

“Don’t let short term losses in Bitcoin sour you on Bitcoin, crypto or distributed computing,” Weinstein said. “Don’t let Bitcoin zealots chase you away either.” ― Eric Weinstein

“An embedded growth obligation is how fast a structure has to grow in order to maintain its honest positions.” ― Eric Weinstein

“If you’re allowing the political environment to infect your relationships, it’s time to bury the hatchets” ― Eric Weinstein

“There is one place left in which open racism can be practiced institutionally in the U.S. today, that is through this diversity/equity movement, in which it appears to be that you can be openly anti-white, openly anti-straight, openly anti-male, and this is considered progressive” ― Eric Weinstein

” Once I.D.W. folks saw that people like Ben Shapiro were generally smart, highly informed, and often princely in difficult conversations, it’s more understandable that occasionally a few frogs got kissed here and there as some I.D.W. members went in search of other maligned princes” ― Eric Weinstein

“I’m really only interested in building this intellectual movement. The I.D.W. has bigger goals than anyone’s buzz or celebrity” ― Eric Weinstein

“Individuals in very small groups are about the only thing that is free of the disease of the embedded growth obligation.” ― Eric Weinstein

On Holding Trump Accountable (see The Best Trump Quotes here): “I’ve studied Trump’s style and it is based around deliberate ambiguities that Left and Right can be counted upon to hear as meaning different things. If Trump makes N nested ambiguous statements in a minute, he will create a minimum of 2 to the N legs of the decision tree that must be considered, given your strategy. He will force you and the rest of the United States public intellectuals to waste much of your intellectual life, for four to eight years, picking up after him. He just needs to knock over the intellectual vases faster than you can glue their shards back together. No matter how good you are, you aren’t going to make it through like that.” ― Eric Weinstein

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On The Peter Principle: “The Peter principle has to do with systems of selective pressures, so that in a previous world where corporate ladders actually functioned (which many of our younger viewers won’t know anything about because the corporate latter hasn’t worked for a great deal of time) people would advance by merit to the point at which they would find that they were first incompetent and then they would stop there, and effectively you would go one step beyond where your competency lay. I think that the Peter principle really doesn’t function because what you now have is an insane situation in which you have people like myself: about 55 years old (54, technically) who have never even started our careers because of the holding pattern that we find having to do with tremendous numbers of people in the silent and boomer generations holding the important chairs” ― Eric Weinstein

On Meritocracy: “So in terms of progressivism, one of the things that’s very important to understand is that in many ways the market is not actually functioning to promote talent. There’s a great deal of skepticism about whether meritocracy can continue to be a part of the American story. And then what we’re finding is that in the absence of a functioning meritocracy we see Maoism as being incredibly important and being embraced by one of our two major parties, and I see Maoism is very distinct from progressivism.” ― Eric Weinstein

On Credentialism: “Credentialism has given us a culture of silos. Therefore, because everyone is afraid of violating the Dunning-Kruger principle, effectively we don’t have people roaming around the cabin or with “all-access” passes.” ― Eric Weinstein

On the NYTimes: “They’re not hard-left; they’re nuts. … Stupid and crazy shouldn’t be part of a political–spectrum that should be a mental condition.” ― Eric Weinstein

“The unthinkable is misnamed.” ― Eric Weinstein

“these things, which while complicated, succumb to our intellects – they’re much simpler than we ever imagined. to be able to create something that normally happens in the Sun – on an island in the Pacific. or to be able to rewrite a cell the way craig Venter did – synthetic biology. we are now gods, but for the wisdom” ― Eric Weinstein

“When it’s time to leave, don’t wait for the bread to rise” ― Eric Weinstein

“the invisible world is first discovered by the visible world’s failure to close.” ― Eric Weinstein

“Don’t be afraid to fool yourself into thinking that life is meaningful and that, against all odds, you have an important part to play in the world. If it’s all meaningless you‘ll have done no harm lying to yourself. And if by some chance this matters, you will waste less time.” ― Eric Weinstein

“What I think theoretical physics has failed to do it hasn’t build a portal for most people to even understand what the issues are what are the objects what is the game.” ― Eric Weinstein

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“The fear that happens when you start swimming away from the shore that you’re not going to find a next island before your strength gives out. I think it’s very rational to be afraid of thinking for yourself because you may very easily find yourself at odds with the community on which you depend. And I think for some of us, it’s just a compulsive behavior. It’s not even necessarily the smartest evolutionary strategy. It’s just hard to do it any other way.” ― Eric Weinstein

Double Island rules “I) if an intelligent person is making a point that sounds stupid, begin by assuming it is counterintuitive. II) if an intelligent person is making a point that sounds obvious, begin by assuming they are saying something subtle.“ ― Eric Weinstein

“Every subject is much easier than the people who wish to make money teaching it would have you know” ― Eric Weinstein

“My four things I care about are truth, meaning, fitness and grace” ― Eric Weinstein

Lex Friedman: “What do you hope your legacy is?” Eric: “i hope my legacy is accurate” ― Eric Weinstein

“Everybody with a very different experience is more important to me than everyone with the standard experience.”― Eric Weinstein

“In a world in which no one will cover the goddamn story, you’re looking for the outlet that will.” ― Eric Weinstein

“Once you understand that there’s sort of this weird rule, which is if all of us pretend that thing isn’t happening, then the idea is, no one has to cover it. No one has to discuss what it is.”― Eric Weinstein

“My contention is anytime you move private life into the public sector, it appears bizarre and is incredibly damaging.” ― Eric Weinstein

“The most important ideas are likely to be the ideas that are most disruptive.”― Eric Weinstein

“What makes an aspect of the DISC, what shows you a particular proponent, is that it protects institutions from individuals who are making valid and reasonable points” ― Eric Weinstein

“Nice is dead, good has a future. Nice doesn’t have a future because nice ends up with Gulags”― Eric Weinstein

“The fact that they are raising cap-ex shows that they expect business is strong enough to support the investment.” ― Eric Weinstein

“People are less likely to travel to Hong Kong but does that mean business is slow because of that? No, it’s because the economy hasn’t picked up.” ― Eric Weinstein

“Guidance was disappointing. Inventories and chipset shortages are still issues.” ― Eric Weinstein

“The worst of the news is behind us and if people think the sector will bounce back, investors will buy stocks ahead of that” ― Eric Weinstein

On the significance of Kung Fu Panda: “And if you think about that for a second, you’ll realize that Einstein wasn’t successful in leaving any Einsteins, and Francis Crick didn’t leave Francis Cricks, and Winston Churchill didn’t leave any Winston Churchills. If there was some way for a Newton to leave a Newton dependably, the world would be a completely different place. And what Kung Fu Panda was trying to do, in my opinion, was to struggle with this question of how would an innovator leave a successor when it’s his time to go? And so my claim was that the original innovator in the film is a turtle, which is an even more inappropriate kung fu archetype than a panda because they’re obviously slow-moving. And the turtle works out the secrets of harmony and focus at the Pool of Sacred Tears. But when the kingdom is threatened by a kung fu student of great ability who’s gone wrong, all that the kingdom can muster is the usual collection of over-trained students. So think aspirants to Princeton and Stanford and Harvard. And so these are all the kids who would get perfect SATs and have amazing extracurricular activities. But fundamentally, what we don’t realize is that they’ve all been rendered incomplete in a way because they can’t tap into the self- teaching modality because they have been so thoroughly over- taught. And so the turtle recognizes that the panda is the only one who can save the day. And all the turtle has to go on in choosing a successor is that the panda has innovated one silly thing, which is to turn a fireworks cart into a makeshift rocket to jump a wall. And so from this humble beginning, the magic unfolds. And it’s really about the magic of how one self-teacher leaves a successor and solves the problem.” ― Eric Weinstein

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“More or less, those of us who have a business model that is based upon dividing the country have to realize that we are about to saw off the branch on which we rest…Really the choice is ours, and I think the key issue is that only a tiny number of people have tried to call balls and strikes as opposed to demonizing one side from the other.” ― Eric Weinstein

Related: Jordan Peterson’s Most Interesting Quotes

 Joe Rogan Experience #1453 – Eric Weinstein

If you want to see one of Eric’s best interviews of all time, this is definitely the one to watch! As of this writing, this has been seen by over 7 Million people!

Related: Tibor Machan’s Best Quotes

Summary

I hope you enjoyed these quotes by Eric Weinstein. He has risen to prominence in recent years for a reason – he is one of my favorite public intellectuals. He always has an interesting angle in thinking about a topical current event, a theory that might involve economics, public policy, politics, or a broad range of topics.

You can learn more about Eric on his website 

Image Credit: Rebel Wisdom, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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