Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.

I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.

Sometimes I think that there’s a fine line between impressionistic and messy.

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

It’s kind of exhilarating, walking through a crazy, insane mob. The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

I criticize by creation – not by finding fault.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

Fifty years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy, setting us back in Latin America. That’s why we restored diplomatic relations, opened the door to travel and commerce, and positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people.

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

I’ve never written a song in my life. It’s all a big hoax.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

What really turns me on about technology is not just the ability to get more songs on MP3 players. The revolution – this revolution – is much bigger than that. I hope, I believe. What turns me on about the digital age, what excites me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing.

No great thing is created suddenly.

There’s no point in starting a business unless you’re going to make a dramatic difference to other people’s lives. So if you’ve got an idea that’s gonna make a big difference to other people’s lives, then just get on and do it.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

I think every age lives in a blend of technology so there’s always older ones mixed in with newer ones, and when the new technology goes down, the immediate fallback position is either that technology just before that or one several technologies back.

You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I’ve only ever had one.

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.

I’m born with a pencil in my hand. I did lots of sketching.

Once you get into space, you can really unleash a lot of creativity, but the launch itself? I have been through all of the creative ways, and believe me, chemical rockets are the best.

The man who has no imagination has no wings.

People expect your behavior to conform to known patterns and conventions. Your task as a strategist is to upset their expectations.

My paintings have gotten to be pretty popular and I’ve taken a little bit more interest in painting the last few years. In fact, my novel that I wrote not too long ago, ‚The Hornet’s Nest,‘ I painted the cover picture for it and I do a good bit of painting now.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

I can express myself.

Science is magic that works.

Whatever is on the page is what I’m married to. I’m very prepared. I’m a thespian. I don’t like to improv. I don’t like to go off course ‚cause I think that’s where stuff happens. When you stick to the material ‚cause it’s written so well, that’s where the magic happens.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

I never thought, in my lifetime, that you’d be able to watch movies, read books and listen to music from a phone, but I guess the technology of tomorrow is here today.

We have soon to have everywhere smoke annihilators, dust absorbers, ozonizers, sterilizers of water, air, food and clothing, and accident preventers on streets, elevated roads and in subways. It will become next to impossible to contract disease germs or get hurt in the city, and country folk will got to town to rest and get well.

Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It’s the same with me and writing.

In art the best is good enough.

I believe in being an innovator.

At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top – I’m afraid that’s not quite right.

This young century will be liberty’s century.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents‘ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That’s over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it’s going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade.

Many are they who have a taste and love for drawing, but no talent; and this will be discernible in boys who are not diligent and never finish their drawings with shading.

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

My biggest criticism is how can people be so easily satisfied? Even people with talent.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

I’ve been in the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus since I was 8.

The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren’t thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about – they weren’t putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home.

Everything that’s created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

To the audience, it’s like I’m changing the subject every five seconds, but to me, my show’s almost like a 90-minute song that I know exactly. I wrote every note, and I know exactly where everything is.

Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.

When you revolutionize education, you’re taking the very mechanism of how people be smarter and do new things, and you’re priming the pump for so many incredible things.

America has tossed its cap over the wall of space.

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy – but that could change.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.