Success and failure: “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”
On capitalism: “The market does not drive the scientists, the communicators, the thinkers, the government to do the right things.”
On business: “Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe 10 percent to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card.”
His greatest achievement: “The most important work I got a chance to be involved in, no matter what I do, is the personal computer… I even knew not to get married until later because I was so obsessed with it. That’s my life’s work.”
Technology in context: “Fine, go to those Bangalore Infosys centers, but just for the hell of it go three miles aside and go look at the guy living with no toilet, no running water … The world is not flat and PCs are not, in the hierarchy of human needs, in the first five rungs.”
On government: “You have to have a certain realism that government is a pretty blunt instrument and without the constant attention of highly qualified people with the right metrics, it will fall into not doing things very well.”
Simple pleasures: “Playing Bridge is a pretty old fashioned thing in a way that I really like ... I do the dishes every night - other people volunteer but I like the way I do it.”