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.

I’m never fully satisfied with any Microsoft product.

I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.

America has tossed its cap over the wall of space.

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.

We could definitely make a flying car – but that’s not the hard part. The hard part is, how do you make a flying car that’s super safe and quiet? Because if it’s a howler, you’re going to make people very unhappy.

Sometimes cameras and television are good to people and sometimes they aren’t. I don’t know if its the way you say it, or how you look.

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.

The desktop metaphor was invented because one, you were a stand-alone device, and two, you had to manage your own storage. That’s a very big thing in a desktop world. And that may go away. You may not have to manage your own storage. You may not store much before too long.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

In business, success often depends upon the relative age of your ideas.

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

I find it amusing that I’m on the Internet now, because I’ve criticized it, but mainly I’ve criticized it on the basis of, ‚What are you going to do with it?‘

It’s a fact that more people watch television and get their information that way than read books. I find new technology and new ways of communication very exciting and would like to do more in this field.

The Oklahoma City bombing was simple technology, horribly used. The problem is not technology. The problem is the person or persons using it.

Speed, it seems to me, provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.

Older people sit down and ask, ‚What is it?‘ but the boy asks, ‚What can I do with it?‘.

It’s time for the human race to enter the solar system.

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.

The intersection of law, politics, and technology is going to force a lot of good thinking.

I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

We know that the nation that goes all-in on innovation today will own the global economy tomorrow. This is an edge America cannot surrender.

We will explore the mysteries of science and harness the power of technology and innovation. We will realise the opportunities of the digital world. Our youth will learn more from – and with – each other.

Without electricity, the air would rot.

We have too many cellphones. We’ve got too many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.

You can’t really imagine music without technology.

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

DOS is ugly and interferes with users‘ experience.

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

I think that the digital media are interesting enough in their own right to be worth originating something in.

I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.

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 most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it to a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people – as remarkable as the telephone.

The most genius thing about the way I create is to create with other geniuses.

It would be a terrific innovation if you could get your mind to stretch a little further than the next wisecrack.

You’ll see more and more perfection of that – computer as servant. But the next thing is going to be computer as a guide or agent.

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.

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

We have to build the capacity of our institutions, employees and workers. Our regulatory environment has not been encouraging to research, innovation and enterprise.

In ‚Changeling,‘ I tried to show something you’d never see nowadays – a kid sitting and looking at the radio. Just sitting in front of the radio and listening. Your mind does the rest.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

I do think there should be some regulations on AI.

People will visit Mars, they will settle mars, and we should because it’s cool.

We are not even close to finishing the basic dream of what the PC can be.

People are using Windows PCs more than they watch TV now.

The engineering is long gone in most PC companies. In the consumer electronics companies, they don’t understand the software parts of it. And so you really can’t make the products that you can make at Apple anywhere else right now. Apple’s the only company that has everything under one roof.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

In order for us to have a future that’s exciting and inspiring, it has to be one where we’re a space-bearing civilization.

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

Science is a tool, and we invent tools to do things we want. It’s a question of how those tools are used by people.

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.

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

People don’t want lots and lots of single purpose devices. They do not want to have to learn how to set up something for photos, another thing for music, another thing for video.

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

Men have become the tools of their tools.

The age in which we live, this non-stop distraction, is making it more impossible for the young generation to ever have the curiosity or discipline… because you need to be alone to find out anything.

I just think people have a lot of fiction. But, you know, I mean, the real story of Facebook is just that we’ve worked so hard for all this time. I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded.

The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.

Perhaps one day we will have machines that can cope with approximate task descriptions, but in the meantime, we have to be very prissy about how we tell computers to do things.

I love the freedom of movement that my phone gives me. That has definitely transformed my life.