About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain read more

About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.

The Internet is like a giant jellyfish. You can't step on it. You can't go around it. You've got to read more

The Internet is like a giant jellyfish. You can't step on it. You can't go around it. You've got to get through it.

The tools we use have a profound (and devious!) influence on our thinking habits, and, therefore, on our thinking abilities.

The tools we use have a profound (and devious!) influence on our thinking habits, and, therefore, on our thinking abilities.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of read more

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life. - Inaugural Address.

If you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in a person.

If you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in a person.

I'm projecting somewhere between 100 million and 200 million computers [on the Net] by the end of December 2000, and read more

I'm projecting somewhere between 100 million and 200 million computers [on the Net] by the end of December 2000, and about 300 million users by that same time.

...there is no prescribed route to follow to arrive at a new idea. You have to make the intuitive leap. read more

...there is no prescribed route to follow to arrive at a new idea. You have to make the intuitive leap. But the difference is that once you've made the intuitive leap you have to justify it by filling in the intermediate steps. In my case, it often happens that I have an idea, but then I try to fill in the intermediate steps and find that they don't work, so I have to give it up.

For my confirmation, I didn't get a watch and my first pair of long pants, like most Lutheran boys. I read more

For my confirmation, I didn't get a watch and my first pair of long pants, like most Lutheran boys. I got a telescope. My mother thought it would make the best gift.

Mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will read more

Mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.