I’m often accused of being ahead of my time, but it’s simply not true. The truth is that everybody else is behind.

I feel that the best companies are started not because the founder wanted a company but because the founder wanted to change the world… If you decide you want to found a company, you maybe start to develop your first idea. And hire lots of workers.

The march of the human mind is slow.

For my part, I desire to see the time when education – and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry – shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate the happy period.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.

Nothing recedes like progress.

Generally, a writer of force is anywhere from 20 years to 200 years ahead of his generation.

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

We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.

Mediocre theoretical physicists make no progress. They spend all their time understanding other people’s progress.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

Well, Apple invented the PC as we know it, and then it invented the graphical user interface as we know it eight years later (with the introduction of the Mac). But then, the company had a decade in which it took a nap.

Taking bold action on climate change simply makes good business sense. It’s also the right thing to do for people and the planet. Setting a net-zero GHG emissions target by 2050 will drive innovation, grow jobs, build prosperity, and secure a better world for what will soon be 9 billion people.

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.

I’m not a futurist.

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.

I’m trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.

The idea that you encourage companies to take their innovative thinkers and think about the most needy – even beyond the market opportunities – that’s something that appropriately ought to be done.

We walk together, we move together, we think together, we resolve together, and together we take this country forward.

The United States fully accepts the profound truth that our own progress, prosperity, and peace are interlocked with the progress, prosperity, and peace of all humanity.

One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

I’m responsible for starting a whole new school of pretension.

Success is steady progress toward one’s personal goals.

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.

Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.

When the PC was launched, people knew it was important.

Whenever I go on a ride, I’m always thinking of what’s wrong with the thing and how it can be improved.

I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It’s the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company.

In the history of medicine, it is not always the great scientist or the learned doctor who goes forward to discover new fields, new avenues, new ideas.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

People use technology only to mean digital technology. Technology is actually everything we make.

I sincerely hope I can contribute to the progress there has been in relations between Jews and Catholics since the Second Vatican Council in a spirit of renewed collaboration.

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

Whatever has happened in my quest for innovation has been part of my quest for immaculate reality.

I was a peripheral visionary. I could see the future, but only way off to the side.

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

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.

You can’t say civilization don’t advance… in every war they kill you in a new way.

The smart thing in the art world is to have one good idea and never have another.

Nothing on this earth is standing still. It’s either growing or it’s dying. No matter if it’s a tree or a human being.

The progress of India is the destiny of one-sixth of humanity. And it will also mean a world more confident of its prosperity and more secure about its future.

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.

We are a forward-looking people, and we must have a forward-looking government.

If you’ve spent a long time developing a skill and techniques, and now some 14 year-old upstart can get exactly the same result, you might feel a bit miffed I suppose, but that has happened forever.

Of the various branches of electrical investigation, perhaps the most interesting and immediately the most promising is that dealing with alternating currents.

I feel very strongly that SpaceX would not have been able to get started, nor would we have made the progress that we have, without the help of NASA.

If a man can… make a better mousetrap, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

For Africa to move forward, you’ve really got to get rid of malaria.

Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.

Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn’t been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that’s really worthwhile.

Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level.

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.

But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem.

To all the musicians who are making reggaeton, let’s put some more effort into it and bring something new to the people!

Even as you make progress, you need the discipline to keep from backtracking and sabotaging the success as it’s happening.

If you want to talk about something new, you have to make up a new kind of language.

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.