Quotes to inspire and reflect

Should there be cameras everywhere in outdoor streets? My personal view is having cameras in inner cities is a very good thing. In the case of London, petty crime has gone down. They catch terrorists because of it. And if something really bad happens, most of the time you can figure out who did it.

What's amazing is, if young people understood how doing well in school makes the rest of their life so much more interesting, they would be more motivated. It's so far away in time that they can't appreciate what it means for their whole life.

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.

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Governments will always play a huge part in solving big problems. They set public policy and are uniquely able to provide the resources to make sure solutions reach everyone who needs them. They also fund basic research, which is a crucial component of the innovation that improves life for everyone

The vision is really about empowering workers, giving them all the information about what's going on so they can do a lot more than they've done in the past.

This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50.

Every day we were saying, 'How can we keep this customer happy?' How can we get ahead in innovation by doing this, because if we don't, somebody else will.

I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.

Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.

If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1000 MPG.

It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself.

To create a new standard it takes something that's not just a little bit different. It takes something that's really new and really captures people's imagination. And the Macintosh, of all the machines I've ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.

Great organizations demand a high level of commitment by the people involved.

I'm a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they're interested in.

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.

If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.

If you can't make it good, at least make it look good.

Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.

If you give people tools, and they use their natural ability and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you very much beyond what you might have expected.

Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.

Life is not fair; get used to it.

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.

Where humor is concerned there are no standards - no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.

A nuclear war does not defend a country and it does not defend a system. I've put it the same way many times; not even the most accomplished ideologue will be able to tell the difference between the ashes of capitalism and the ashes of communism.

Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.

The greater the wealth the thicker will be the dirt.

Power is as power does.

It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.

When you see reference to a new paradigm you should always, under all circumstances, take cover.

In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.

People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.

In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.

Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths.

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.

It has been the acknowledged right of every Marxist scholar to read into Marx the particular meaning that he himself prefers and to treat all others with indignation.

The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.

War remains the decisive human failure.

We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.

Economists are economical, among other things, of ideas; most make those of their graduate days last a lifetime.

A liberal is a man too broad minded to take his own side in a quarrel.

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.