We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.

The terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau architecture.

Fame hit me like a ton of bricks.

Next to religion, baseball has had a greater impact on our American way of life than any other American institution.

The path to the CEO’s office should not be through the CFO’s office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs to be through engineering and design.

Great industries are never made from single companies. There is room in space for a lot of winners.

We can all be successful and make money, but when we die, that ends. But when you are significant is when you help other people be successful. That lasts many a lifetime.

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.

You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot – it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

I feel like I’m changing pop culture.

I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.

We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.

Everybody, to some extent, manipulates. Even children learn to cry when they want something. There are all kinds of subtle things we do to get others to follow our lead, not bother us, and so on.

My music is influenced by L.A. culture.

I adapt and I adjust to whatever environment I’m in.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

The Medici created and destroyed me.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

The Vietnam War was a great tragedy for our country. And it is now far enough away so that one can study without using the slogans to see what’s really happened.

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

Agressive music can only shock you once. Afterwards its impact declines. It’s inevitable.

Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force.

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.

I don’t want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death!

I think some people would love to be able to make the clothes I make – and of course, I do influence them, but they keep simplifying, and minimalism doesn’t quite work.

I believe that one person can make a difference.

Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.

Markets are lethal, if only because of ignoring externalities, the impacts of their transactions on the environment.

Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.

Kids are watching us. I experience it every single day. They hang on my every word, what I wear, what I say.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.

Whatever starts in California unfortunately has an inclination to spread.

We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.

The influence of ‚Hidden Fortress‘ comes up a lot because it was printed in a book once. The truth is, the only thing I was inspired by was the fact that it’s told from the point of view of two peasants, who get mixed up with a samurai and princess and a lot of very high-level people.

People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude.

Power is not alluring to pure minds.

Actually, to be an effective person politically in this country, I think you have to be thirty or over, and also you have to be rich, well-placed, you have to be close to power. And I don’t think that young people, because they look young, can do much, as I think they are counterproductive.

We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it.

Billy Graham is one of my great lifetime heroes. I think he epitomizes the essence of what a Christian leader should be. I have participated in some of his crusades a couple of times in Atlanta. I’ve seen the profound impact he’s had on me personally, and on other people who were not Christians and accepted Christ as Savior.

Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

With every word we utter, with every action we take, we know our kids are watching us. We as parents are their most important role models.

Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.

I love dresses, and I’ve definitely thought about designing them someday. I just want to make sure that I wait until the time is perfect and I can do it right.

I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

There’s only one thing that can kill the movies, and that’s education.

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.

If it weren’t for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.

The Milky Way is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters.

Politics is the art of controlling your environment.

Why should I care about posterity? What’s posterity ever done for me?

I think it’s my responsibility, as a person of influence… to sometimes try to do what I can.

I used to consider the listener. But now I’m in a space where, if I’m not inspired, I can’t really do the music. I can’t feel it.