For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

Investigate, educate and organize.

A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Suddenly degrees aren't worth anything. Isn't that true? When I was a student, if you had a degree, you had a job. If you didn't have a job it's because you didn't want one. And I didn't want one, frankly.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

It took us three years to build the NeXT computer. If we'd given customers what they said they wanted, we'd have built a computer they'd have been happy with a year after we spoke to them - not something they'd want now.

Learning gives creativity, Creativity leads to thinking, Thinking provides knowledge, Knowledge makes you great.

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

The secret of life is not enjoyment but education through experience.

Many much-learned men have no intelligence.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

The first idea the child must acquire is that of the difference between good and evil.

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.