刚开始看本书，纯粹为了锻炼英语能力，但随着逐步深入阅读和理解，发现作者所写字字珠玑，见解深刻。与主流成功和奋斗思路不同，作者从万事万物的发展规律入手，所谓顺者昌、逆者亡，个人发展也不能违背大自然几十亿年形成的规律和原则。
作者完全利用第一性原理去思考和践行，总结的金科玉律和独立思考的能力及观察角度值得好好学习，本文将节选其中印象深刻的金句并按照自己理解翻译出来。
1，The consensus is often wrong, so I have to be an independent thinker.
大多数人的想法其实经常是错误的，我必须要成为一个有独立思考能力的人。
2，I never cared much about others’conclusions—only forthe reasoning that led to these conclusions.
我从来不在乎他人的观点和结论，只关注他人是如何得出这些结论的理由。
3，1)working for what I wanted, not for what others wanted me to do; 2) coming up with the best independent opinions I could muster to move toward my goals; 3) stress - testing my opinions by having the smartest people I could find challenge them so I could find out where I was wrong; 4) being wary about overconfidence, and good at not knowing; and 5) wrestling with reality, experiencing the results of my decisions, and reflecting on what I did to produce them so that I could improve.
1)主动做自己想做的而不是他人想让你被动去做的事情；2)思考那些最优秀、最独立的观点去实现自己的目标；3)找那些最睿智的人检验我的观点和想法，由此我能发现其中更多的谬误；4)警惕自己过于自信和保持无知心态；5)在实践中检验和摔打我决断的效果，反思我是如何做出判断并加以改进。
4，So, because of the law of diminishing returns, it is only natural that seeking something new, or seeking new depths of something old, is required to bring us satisfaction.
基于收益递减原则，人只有不断寻找新刺激或挖掘已知刺激的深度才能不断给我们带来满足感。
作者借此说明财富的不断增加不会让人一直保持满足和幸福感觉，人拥有的财富达到一定程度后，再累积也不会给你带来更满足和幸福的感觉。人的感觉是个巨大的黑洞，唯有比以往更强烈的刺激才会让你更有感觉。所以，自己的感觉是相对的，是不靠谱的，比如小时候日子不好的时候，过年有好吃到是很开森的事，现在天天如此你也不觉得怎么样。
5，Look at what caused people to make a lot of money and you will see that usually it is in proportion to their production of what the society wanted and largely unrelated to their desire to make money.
观察那些赚钱的原因，你会发现他们赚钱的多少与他们的贡献和社会需要程度成正比而与赚钱的欲望程度没多大关系。
也就是往往为了赚钱反而赚不到，而真正想去解决社会所需的努力才更有价值，更可能获得社会金钱的回报。
6，The most important quality that differentiates successful people from unsuccessful people is our capacity to learn and adapt to these things.
区分成功和不成功人士最重要的特征是学习的和适应的能力。
7，the quality of our lives depends on the quality ofthe decisions we make.
我们生活的质量取决于我们做出选择的质量。
8，Of course it is true that people are born with differences in their various innate abilities. However, judgment is primarily learned.
毋庸置疑，每人天生的能力有差异，然而，做选择所需最重要的判断能力其实是后天习得的。
9，What is essential is that you are clear about what you want and that you figure out how to get it.
最重要的是你清楚知道自己想要什么和如何才能实现。
10，I believe that the need to have meaningful work is connected to man’s innate desire to improve.
我相信有意义的工作与人类天然要求进步的意愿相关联。
11，Most people react to pain badly. They have “fight or flight” reactions to it: they either strike out at whatever brought them the pain or they try to run away from it. As a result, they don’t learn to find ways around their barriers, so they encounter them over and over again and make little or no progress toward what they want.
绝大多数人对痛苦的反应都不对，他们产生对抗或逃避的反应：或者与痛苦之源搏斗或者落荒而逃。结果他们并没有学会如何克服痛苦和提高自己，因此不断碰到类似痛苦，以至于被困在原地无法朝着自己目标迈进。
12，When faced with an obstacle or threat, an emotional reaction (e.g. pain) can be triggered that can lead to a fight or flight reaction that “hijacks” decision making away from the pre-frontal cortex, where the rational choices are being made. This can result in our making decisions that produce consequences that we do not want. This typically causes really big problems.
人们遇到挫折或危险时，情绪化的痛苦反应将被触发：战斗或逃跑，造成前额大脑的理性决策能力被情绪脑劫持。这会导致我们做出本不想要的决定并带来巨大的问题。