Quotes from Paul Allen

In order to be truly intelligent, computers must understand - that is probably the critical word.

The NBA is intense, but the NFL is a whole 'nother level of intensity and dramatic, game-changing plays.

Something that is characteristic of me is the breadth of my interests.

AI2 was born from a desire to create a system that could truly reason about knowledge, rather than just offer up what had been written on a subject before.

The biggest yacht that I have accommodates a submarine.

I was the center on our fraternity team, but I was a center-eligible, so I was known for my ability to go out, and I was pretty sure-handed catching a pass in the flat about ten yards down the field. My father played high school football and was pretty good. He also played center, so I always relished the idea that we both ended up playing center.

Seattle has a long tradition of celebrating local and non-local art - from the Burke and Seattle Art Museums to the Asian Art Museum.

To me, it's the kind of interesting question the human race should be investing in. Is there intelligent life out there? Are there other beings out there?

As always, space remains an unforgiving frontier, and the skies overhead will surely present obstacles and setbacks that must be overcome. But hard challenges demand fresh approaches, and I'm optimistic that Stratolaunch will yield transformative benefits - not only for scientists and space entrepreneurs, but for all of us.

There are so many websites I read; I look at everything from Slashdot to Ars Technica to the business technology sites, major newspapers like the 'New York Times,' and my local papers where I live, which cover the sports teams I'm involved with. There are about 20 sites we go to regularly, and I do use Twitter and Facebook as well.

I think if you look at, for instance, what the Seahawks - what we did winning the Super Bowl, that was with a very young team. So you have to blend the experience with young players and develop those as well.

At one point, I was the youngest owner in major league sports.

Your dream, when you buy a sports franchise, is to win the championship, the Super Bowl.

From my youth, I'd never stopped thinking in the future tense.

The brain is the most complex, challenging scientific puzzle we have ever tried to decode.

We taught ourselves to simulate how microprocessors work using DEC computers so we could develop software even before our machine was built.

As someone who was basically a software engineer for many years, I became fascinated with how the brain functions and is put together and works in such a different fashion than computers do.

I'm kind of a retired software engineer. I don't write code anymore.

A big part of the success of Microsoft was that every year, the chips our software ran on got faster and cheaper. They doubled in capability every 18 months under Moore's law.

Some people are great at the pure mathematical things - like Bill Gates, he's great at math things. He loves to do puzzles. Me, I like to look at an overall landscape and try to figure out, how do you solve a problem?

I think few people in their lifetime have the chance to be involved in something like the creation of Microsoft - that's always going to be something I'm known for.

Back to Microsoft days, I'm always looking for, 'OK, that's great, but what can go wrong?'

If Microsoft had never existed... The industry would probably be very fragmented.

It turns out, if you go 1,000 feet down in the ocean, it's really dark, and the animals are really strange, but if you put on some Pink Floyd, it's fantastic.