Quotes About Innovation

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.

If black boxes survive air crashes, why don't they make the whole plane out of that stuff?

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that.

Danger, the spur of all great minds.

Congealed thinking is the forerunner of failure... make sure you are always receptive to new ideas.

Sixty-some years ago, biochemical organisms began to assemble digital computers. Now digital computers are beginning to assemble biochemical organisms. Viewed from a distance, this looks like part of a life cycle. But which part? Are biochemical organisms the larval phase of digital computers? Or are digital computers the larval phase of biochemical organisms?

The obsidian flake and the silicon chip are struck by the light of the same campfire that has passed from hand to hand since the human mind began.

The digital universe and the hydrogen bomb were brought into existence at the same time. "It is an irony of fate," observes Françoise Ulam, "that much of the high-tech world we live in today, the conquest of space, the extraordinary advances in biology and medicine, were spurred on by one man's monomania and the need to develop electronic computers to calculate whether an H-bomb could be built or not.

Software was born. Numerical codes would be granted full control—including the power to modify themselves.1

You press the button, we do the rest.

We have come a long way from sod huts and muddy boots to an economy that produces billions of dollars' worth of soap. And we may be learning what Mark Twain meant: "Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

Don't be afraid to employ people who will force you out of your comfort zone.

As an entrepreneur, don't follow the crowd; let them follow you.

The best entrepreneurs have found a way to serve others and as a result discover their greatest fulfillment.

In some sense, the military is the most modern part of a developing country.

It is interesting to note that Copernicus was German/Polish, Luther was German, and Gutenberg was German.

Japan will need to foster deep

the idea that the past is obsolete is always resisted at an era's end.

The United States will deal with it as it always does, with its citizens going through a decade of intense political rage at each other, accompanied by an economic crisis and a social one: the old against the young, and the problem of innovation leading to instability. Finally, the political process will create a solution, with a failing president who worships the old cycle, followed by one who will claim credit for presiding over the new cycle and its solutions.

The most precious resource in the world economy is human genius.

Today, on a per capita basis, Israel far leads the world in research and technological creativity.

The freer an economy is, the more this human diversity of knowledge will be manifested. By contrast, political power originates in top-down processes-governments, monopolies, regulators, and elite institutions-all attempting to quell human diversity and impose order. Thus power always seeks centralization.

Far from being greedy, America's leading entrepreneurs—with some exceptions—display discipline and self-control, hard work and austerity, excelling those found in any college of social work, Washington think tank, or congregation of bishops.

Even though Jews are a tiny minority of less than a tenth of 1 percent of the world's people, they comprise perhaps a quarter of the world's paramount capitalists and entrepreneurs.