When Thomas Edison worked late into the night on the electric light, he had to do it by gas lamp or candle. I’m sure it made the work seem that much more urgent.

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.

It’s not going to do any good to land on Mars if we’re stupid.

The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every calling, is diligence.

If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.

Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

Democracy is not static. It is a living force. Every new idea, every new invention offers opportunity for both good and evil.

Man who invented the hamburger was smart; man who invented the cheeseburger was a genius.

Microsoft is not about greed. It’s about innovation and fairness.

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

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

Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.

You know, T can stand for anything. T stand for working hard. T stand for loving thy neighbor. T stand for feeding the hungry. T stand for just working, working, working, being happy on the set, you know, lifting everybody’s spirits. T stands for just a nice guy.

The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.

Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Because, you know, resilience – if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.

Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.

New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!

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.

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

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

We must ensure that technology is accessible, affordable, and adds value.

I think Americans generally are not used to working very hard, in terms of working for the collective. I think in our country we have taken individualism to its farthest reaches, possibly.

I’ve always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that.

Whatever work you do, you think are you doing this for the good of the nation? That’s the basic training. The other basic training is discipline. Your life should be disciplined. The other thing they say is what work you get, do it well.

You cannot make a giant space company in your dorm room. Not today. And the reason is that the heavy lifting infrastructure isn’t in place.

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.

I’ll always stay connected with Apple. I hope that throughout my life I’ll sort of have the thread of my life and the thread of Apple weave in and out of each other, like a tapestry. There may be a few years when I’m not there, but I’ll always come back.

My goals are so high that I don’t have time to relax in any way, shape or form.

Civilisations have been destroyed many times, and this civilisation is no different. It can be destroyed. We can think of time in terms of millions of years and life will resume little by little. The cosmos operates for us very urgently, but geological time is different.

It is a neck-and-neck race between Mr. Gray and myself who shall complete our apparatus first. He has the advantage over me in being a practical electrician – but I have reason to believe that I am better acquainted with the phenomena of sound than he is – so that I have an advantage there.

I have already demonstrated, by crucial tests, the practicability of signaling by my system from one to any other point of the globe, no matter how remote, and I shall soon convert the disbelievers.

If that’s there, I believe that technology will probably step up to their part of it.

We go to school to learn to work hard for money. I write books and create products that teach people how to have money work hard for them.

Art is to be free. Design is to fix.

The solar system can support a trillion humans. And then we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins.

Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.

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

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

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.

California is not just the Golden State. We are also the Internet State.

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

I keep working because I learn something new all the time.

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

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.

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.

America is a country of inventors, and the greatest of inventors are the newspaper men.

Oh, yes; you Virginians shed barrels of perspiration while standing off at a distance and superintending the work your slaves do for you. It is different with us. Here it is every fellow for himself, or he doesn’t get there.

A teacher should have a creative mind.

America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there.

I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.

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.

Right now it’s only a notion, but I think I can get the money to make it into a concept, and later turn it into an idea.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

Those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow, half-hearted success that breeds bitterness all around.

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

Software constraints are only confining if you use them for what they’re intended to be used for.

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.

I like to have fun all the time, even if I’m working.

No one has a greater asset for his business than a man’s pride in his work.