Richard Thaler:

My advice for young researchers at the start of their career is... Work on your own ideas, not your advisor's ideas (or at least in addition to her ideas). And spend more time thinking and less time reading.

Try writing the first paper on some topic, not the tenth, and never the 50th.

Stanley McChrystal:

You have to not lose confidence in what you are doing. You have to be able to go to the edge of the abyss without losing hope.

Rafiq Kathwari:

The world is vast. Plumb
your own universe.

Nathaniel Rich:

The deeper you dive, the more you get paid. In his second or third year an apprentice may be promoted, or "broken out," to a full-time diver. His salary will increase to between $60,000 and $75,000. He will start as an "air diver," diving as deep as 120 feet while breathing regular air. Jobs at this depth might include retrieving tools from the worksite, or cutting and retrieving the polypropylene cord that runs between the surface vessel and the underwater worksite. Next the diver will be assigned to more complex jobs below a hundred feet, for which he must breathe mixed gas in order to avoid suffering the effects of nitrogen narcosis while working with heavy machinery. A full-time mixed-gas diver can earn more than $100,000 a year. He will perform jobs at ever greater depths, with higher degrees of technical difficulty, until his diving supervisor deems him ready to graduate to saturation diving. Sat divers can make $200,000 a year. Sat's where it's at.

Nizar Qabbani:

Dive into the sea, or stay away.