Quotes from Ray Kurzweil

My mission at Google is to develop natural language understanding with a team and in collaboration with other researchers at Google.

I think we are evolving rapidly into one world culture. It's certainly one world economy. With billions of people online, I think we'll appreciate the wisdom in many different traditions as we learn more about them. People were very isolated and didn't know anything about other religions 100 years ago.

The Blue Brain project expects to have a full human-scale simulation of the cerebral cortex by 2018. I think that's a little optimistic, actually, but I do make the case that by 2029 we will have very detailed models and simulations of all the different brain regions.

Information defines your personality, your memories, your skills.

I consider myself an inventor, entrepreneur, and author.

I'm an inventor. I became interested in long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.

People talk philosophically, Oh, I don't want to live past 100.' You know, I'd like to hear them say that when they're 99.

I envision some years from now that the majority of search queries will be answered without you actually asking. It'll just know this is something that you're going to want to see.

By the time we get to the 2040s, we'll be able to multiply human intelligence a billionfold. That will be a profound change that's singular in nature. Computers are going to keep getting smaller and smaller. Ultimately, they will go inside our bodies and brains and make us healthier, make us smarter.

Science fiction is the great opportunity to speculate on what could happen. It does give me, as a futurist, scenarios.

As order exponentially increases, time exponentially speeds up.

Even by common wisdom, there seem to be both people and objects in my dream that are outside myself, but clearly they were created in myself and are part of me, they are mental constructs in my own brain.

I decided to be an inventor when I was five. My parents had given me a few various enrichment toys like erector sets, and for some reason I had the idea that if I put things together just the right way, I could create the intended effect.

Once we have inexpensive energy, we can readily and inexpensively convert the vast amount of dirty and salinated water we have on the planet to usable water.

Doing real world projects is, I think, the best way to learn and also to engage the world and find out what the world is all about.

By 2009, computers will disappear. Displays will be written directly onto our retinas by devices in our eyeglasses and contact lenses.

The telephone is virtual reality in that you can meet with someone as if you are together, at least for the auditory sense.

New technologies can be used for destructive purposes. The answer is to develop rapid-response systems for new dangers like a bioterrorist creating a new biological virus.

All of our schools need to bring 'learn from doing' into the mainstream education, not just afternoon.

We only have to capture 1/10,000th of the solar energy landing on earth to completely satisfy all our energy needs.

The past is over; the present is fleeting; we live in the future.