Quotes from Esther Dyson

My ambition is to figure out how to help people create their own health and how to turn that into a profitable business.

I think copyright is moral, proper. I think a creator has the right to control the disposition of his or her works - I actually believe that the financial issue is less important than the integrity of the work, the attribution, that kind of stuff.

From the business point of view - not to overstate it - intellectual property is dead; long live intellectual process. Long live service; long live performance.

I enjoy it; my experiences abroad have taught me the importance of an open mind and have given me a willingness to wander off the beaten path - not only to keep life interesting, but also to understand in a meaningful way that things do not look the same from every vantage point.

The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It accentuates what you would do anyway. If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone. If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect.

A worker's paradise is a consumer's hell.

Don't leave hold of your common sense. Think about what you're doing and how the technology can enhance it. Don't think about technology first.

Change means that what was before wasn't perfect. People want things to be better.

Part of the problem is when we bring in a new technology we expect it to be perfect in a way that we don't expect the world that we're familiar with to be perfect.

It may not always be profitable at first for businesses to be online, but it is certainly going to be unprofitable not to be online.

The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It accentuates what you would do anyway. If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone. If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect.

But there is a corollary to freedom and that's personal responsibility, and the real challenge is how you generate that personal responsibility without imposing it.

The most interesting lessons often lie in the mundane - those aspects of everyday life that locals take for granted and tourists tend to overlook.

I would much rather see responsibilities exercised by individuals than have them imposed by the government.

Summer is conference season - a critical time for building brands, making connections, and shaping industries.

Indeed, though people increasingly learn and interact online, we retain a fundamental need to engage in person.

What I'm thinking about more and more these days is simply the importance of transparency, and Jefferson's saying that he'd rather have a free press without a government than a government without a free press.

The challenge of email is that people send you stuff for free, and it becomes items on your to-do list.

I joined the board of the Santa Fe Institute.

I became a real free market fanatic. I'm probably less so now than even two or three years ago.

Normal people with normal lives are not going to ask for sugar-free yogurt. They just take the stuff with sugar in it.

As long as a government can come and shoot you, you can't jump on the Internet to freedom.

And the Russians certainly don't have it. If a woman shows up in a fur coat, I just assume she's a crook. And that's me, the nice American. The assumption that you can't make money honestly is a killer.

Anyone will tell you if you want to run a business, you need to monitor costs and revenues. In the same manner, if you want to run your body, you need to monitor intake and returns. It's in your best interest.