We started off as this platform inside Facebook; and we were pretty clear from the beginning that that wasn’t where it was going to end up. A lot of people saw it and asked, ‚Why is Facebook trying to get all these applications inside Facebook when the web is clearly the platform?‘ And we actually agreed with that.

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.

By giving people the power to share, we’re making the world more transparent.

A lot of times, I run a thought experiment: ‚If I were not at Facebook, what would I be doing to make the world more open?‘

Computers are still technology because we are still wrestling with it: it’s still being invented; we’re still trying to work out how it works. There’s a world of game interaction to come that you or I wouldn’t recognise. It’s time for the machines to disappear. The computer’s got to disappear into all of the things we use.

I don’t have a computer. A computer’s a typewriter. I already have a typewriter.

We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work.

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.

Once I found this possibility to use Twitter and Facebook and my blog to connect to my readers, I’m going to use it, to connect to them and to share thoughts that I cannot use in the book.

Whether it’s Google or Apple or free software, we’ve got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.

The humanists‘ replacement for religion: work really hard and somehow you’ll either save yourself or you’ll be immortal. Of course, that’s a total joke, and our progress is nothing. There may be progress in technology but there’s no ethical progress whatsoever.

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.

My son likes to go see mines and electric plants, or the Large Hadron Collider, and we’ve had a chance to see a lot of interesting stuff.

Google’s done a super good job on search; Apple’s done a great job on the IPod.

I’m never on Twitter. I’m never on Instagram. And that’s not by choice: it’s just that those things never really interested me. I might post a picture here and there, but that ain’t really been my focus.

Science is magic that works.

If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things.

There are people who don’t like capitalism, and people who don’t like PCs. But there’s no-one who likes the PC who doesn’t like Microsoft.

No one has done a study on this, as far as I can tell, but I think Facebook might be the first place where a large number of people have come out. We didn’t create that – society was generally ready for that. I think this is just part of the general trend that we talked about, about society being more open, and I think that’s good.

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.

I’m always interested in what you can do with technology that people haven’t thought of doing yet.

This revolution, the information revoultion, is a revolution of free energy as well, but of another kind: free intellectual energy. It’s very crude today, yet our Macintosh computer takes less power than a 100-watt bulb to run it and it can save you hours a day. What will it be able to do ten or 20 years from now, or 50 years from now?

Don’t you love it that Prince doesn’t use Twitter? Don’t you think he’s somewhere on a unicorn?

Facebook is really about communicating and telling stories… We think that people can really help spread awareness of organ donation and that they want to participate in this to their friends. And that can be a big part of helping solve the crisis that’s out there.

There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

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

It’s not that every single thing that happens on Facebook is gonna be good. This is humanity. People use tools for good and bad, but I think that we have a clear responsibility to make sure that the good is amplified and to do everything we can to mitigate the bad.

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

Men have become the tools of their tools.

If you think back to the beginning of cell phones, laptops or really any new technology, it’s always expensive.

We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

It’s, like, even in journeys like Facebook, we’ve had some very serious ups and downs.

When it comes to social media, there are just times I turn off the world, you know. There are just some times you have to give yourself space to be quiet, which means you’ve got to set those phones down.

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.

The United States tyrannizes and pillages the globalized world with its political, economic, technological, and military might.

I see fighters make funny videos about me and stick them on Facebook and get 20 likes. When I make a video, I sell it to Fox and make seven figures. That’s the difference.

When I was in my 40s, Microsoft was my primary activity.

Our goal is not to build a platform; it’s to be cross all of them.

The only difference between Benito and Bad Bunny is 16 million followers on Instagram. And the money that Bad Bunny has in the bank. Benito had, like, $7. The numbers are different, but I’m still the same. Even my insecurities remain the same.

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.

I think the definition of a book is changing.

I’m not a futurist.

Social media is called social media for a reason. It lends itself to sharing rather than horn-tooting.

People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people – and that social norm is just something that has evolved over time.

You hear doom and gloom about the Internet ruining young people’s command of English – that’s nonsense.

An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator… these are NOT three separate devices! And we are calling it iPhone! Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. And here it is.

Apple took the edge off the word ‚computer.‘

Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

I think the thing we see is that as people are using video games more, they tend to watch passive TV a bit less. And so using the PC for the Internet, playing video games, is starting to cut into the rather unbelievable amount of time people spend watching TV.

Facebook is uniquely positioned to answer questions that people have, like, what sushi restaurants have my friends gone to in New York lately and liked? These are queries you could potentially do with Facebook that you couldn’t do with anything else, we just have to do it.

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that ‚Oryx and Crake‘ is anti-science. Science is a way of knowing, and a tool. Like all ways of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, it’s neutral.

Connectivity is a human right.

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?‘

In this day and age, when you can use a machine or computer to simulate or emulate what people can do together, it still can’t replace the magic of four people in a room playing.

I’m a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything.

I’ve discovered this new electronic technique that creates new speech out of stuff that’s already there.

My first phone was two tin cans tied together with string, and it worked pretty good.

One thing I’ve always loved about the culture at Microsoft is there is nobody who is tougher on us, in terms of what we need to learn and do better, than the people in the company itself. You can walk down these halls, and they’ll tell you, ‚We need to do usability better, push this or that frontier.‘

Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.

The country would be a lot better off if we stopped having comment sections. And if we got rid of Twitter.

Health is certainly extremely important, and we’ve done a number of things at Facebook to help improve global health and work in that area, and I am excited to do more there, too. But the reality is that it’s not an either-or. People need to be healthy and be able to have the Internet as a backbone to connect them to the whole economy.