If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.

World War II broke out in 1939, and many people credit that war with saving the economy.

If you don’t like what someone has to say, argue with them.

To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn’t everything.

I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.

Historically, the stuff of the universe goes on becoming concentrated into ever more organized forms of matter.

Art is to be free. Design is to fix.

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

I’ve had moments when I’ve thought about somebody, picked up the phone to call them and they are on the line already, and I think that maybe there’s some vibration, some connection.

Of all the inventions of humans, the computer is going to rank near or at the top as history unfolds and we look back. It is the most awesome tool that we have ever invented. I feel incredibly lucky to be at exactly the right place in Silicon Valley, at exactly the right time, historically, where this invention has taken form.

I don’t want to tell President Obama how to make a speech. He’s a much better speech maker than I am. But I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.

What can I say? I’m a talker.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

My task over the last two years hasn’t just been to stop the bleeding. My task has also been to try to figure out how do we address some of the structural problems in the economy that have prevented more Googles from being created.

I haven’t gone out of my way to seek advice from people I don’t know.

Being a good listener is absolutely critical to being a good leader; you have to listen to the people who are on the front line.

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, – till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

People like Frank Zappa and Bryan Ferry knew we could pick and choose from the history of music, stick things together looking for friction and energy. They were more like playwrights; they invented characters and wrote a life around them.

Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.

Microsoft has had two goals in the last 10 years. One was to copy the Mac, and the other was to copy Lotus‘ success in the spreadsheet – basically, the applications business. And over the course of the last 10 years, Microsoft accomplished both of those goals. And now they are completely lost.

Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

I think we’re still in a muddle with our language, because once you get words and a spoken language it gets harder to communicate.

Being flooded with information doesn’t mean we have the right information or that we’re in touch with the right people.

We always live in an uncertain world. What is certain is that the United States will go forward over time.

Coffee is a language in itself.

I’m blessed to have such a tight-knit family that we can talk about anything. Whether we talk frequently or not, since we’re on separate ends of the country, there are a lot of moving parts, and we always stay tight and find that center ground that keeps us together.

I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard on something, but working on Macintosh was the neatest experience of my life. Almost everyone who worked on it will say that. None of us wanted to release it at the end. It was as though we knew that once it was out of our hands, it wouldn’t be ours anymore.

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.

If you want what you’re saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody’s life. Your own, first.

The trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn’t want to give the white man nothing else. But the fact is, you got to give em something. Either your money, your land, your woman or your ass.

I really do encourage other manufacturers to bring electric cars to market. It’s a good thing, and they need to bring it to market and keep iterating and improving and make better and better electric cars, and that’s what going to result in humanity achieving a sustainable transport future. I wish it was growing faster than it is.

I’m not really good at fun-to-know, human interest stuff. We’re not ‚celebrities‘, whose life itself is a performance. Good or bad or ugly, we are our words. They’re what people meet.

From the beginning, Mandela and Tambo was besieged with clients. We were not the only African lawyers in South Africa, but we were the only firm of African lawyers. For Africans, we were the firm of first choice and last resort.

Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

A part of me has become immortal, out of my control.

Men do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important of all the lessons of history.

Wandering around the web is like living in a world in which every doorway is actually one of those science fiction devices which deposit you in a completely different part of the world when you walk through them. In fact, it isn’t like it, it is it.

Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.

Canada was built on dead beavers.

Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

People seem to know about May Day everywhere except where it began, here in the United States of America. That’s because those in power have done everything they can to erase its real meaning.

I grew up cursing a lot. It felt natural. My parents told me to stop.

I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did.

A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

History, a distillation of rumour.

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.

I didn’t used to wear a watch. Now I have a SPOT watch, which I wear all the time.

NATO has been a thread throughout my life.

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.

The most talented do not always end up as celebrities, and those with less talent often do. Upsets are written into our history and occur around us every day.

I’m not no Internet person.

I write all of my own speeches.

Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.

The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.

Every aspect of human technology has a dark side, including the bow and arrow.