If you come from a wealthy family, you will have a nice life. But the drive to really get to the top often comes from people who didn’t have all those privileges.
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The Scientist As A Rebel
Science is an alliance of free spirits in all cultures rebelling against the local tyranny that each culture imposes on its children.
The Difference Between Scientists and Engineers
A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who works with as few original ideas as possible.
– Freeman Dyson
A Panic Is A Fear Bubble
What Is Innovation?
Innovation, like evolution, is a process of constantly discovering ways of rearranging the world into forms that are unlikely to arise by chance–and that happen to be useful…it means finding new ways to apply energy to create improbable things, and see them catch on. It means much more than invention, because the word implies developing an invention to the point where it catches on because it is sufficiently practical, affordable, reliable and ubiquitous to be worth using.
Humanity’s Problem
Humanity’s problem today is that we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.
Controlling The Environment
Every job comes with pieces you don’t like…. You have to figure out how to set up your life in such a way that you can minimize the things you don’t like. I’ve found that people don’t dislike hard work. What people dislike is being out of control—they can’t control their life; they can’t control their environment. This happens to me when I get over-scheduled. I hate being over-scheduled. I want some time to be able to think and free myself. We all have the same amount of time in the world. Nobody has more time than anybody else. And when you become a very successful person, one of the things that happens is you start to get over-scheduled…. So you have to guard your time and try to stay a little bit flexible.
Learned Ignorance
A great part of true learning, in fact, takes the form of negative knowledge, of increasing awareness of the range and depth of our unconquered ignorance, and it is one of the major virtues of scholarship that only by means of it, one’s own or someone else’s, can one know when it is safe to dispense with it. Learned ignorance, therefore, is often praiseworthy, although ignorant learning … never is.
Looking and Listening
Above all, the people running a new venture need to spend time outside: in the marketplace, with customers and with their own salesmen, looking and listening.
– Peter Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship