Walter Isaacson Quotes

Henckels knives

His fingerprints are all over today’s technologies. Photoelectric cells and lasers, nuclear power and fiber optics, space travel, and even semiconductors all trace back to his theories.

His method was rooted in experiment, curiosity, and the ability to marvel at phenomena that the rest of us rarely pause to ponder after we’ve outgrown our wonder years.

His wife also did not request any restrictions or control, nor did she ask to see in advance what I would publish. In fact she strongly encouraged me to be honest about his failings as well as his str...

Hopper

How many of you are virgins? How many of you have

Hubble then made an even more amazing discovery. By measuring the red shift of the stars’ spectra (which is the light wave counterpart to the Doppler effect for sound waves), he realized that the gala...

I am a fruitarian and I will only eat leaves picked by virgins in the moonlight - Steve Jobs 

I began to realize that an intuitive understanding and consciousness was more significant than abstract thinking and intellectual logical analysis, he later said. His intensity, however, made it diffi...

I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals or would sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation

I could stay at the bottom of the organization chart, as an engineer.

I designed the Apple I because I wanted to give it away for free to other people, said Wozniak.

I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, he answered, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth—rocks.20

I encountered authority of a different kind than I had ever encountered before, and I did not like it. And they really almost got me. They came close to really beating any curiosity out of me.

I ended up having more than forty interviews and conversations with him.

I had come to revere the Italian designers, just like the kid in Breaking Away reveres the Italian bikers, recalled Jobs, so it was an amazing inspiration.

I hate it when people call themselves entrepreneurs when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on.

I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies like IBM or Microsoft.

I remember him telling me that engineering was the highest level of importance you could reach in the world, Steve Wozniak later recalled. It takes society to a new level.

I think different religions are different doors to the same house.