Walter Isaacson Quotes

I visited Jobs for the last time in his Palo Alto, Calif., home. He had moved to a downstairs bedroom because he was too weak to go up and down stairs. He was curled up in some pain, but his mind was still sharp and his humor vibrant.

I think when you're looking for people to interview, you want to make it fair and honest. You're not just bringing people on so you can beat them up or, you know, make fools out of them or something.

I think that's exactly what Silicon Valley was all about in those days. Let's do a startup in our parents' garage and try to create a business.

I think that we shouldn't be fixated all the time on the ups and downs of the weekly ratings, of the quarter-hour ratings.

I think that Benjamin Franklin felt very strongly in foreign policy in this world, that you needed to at least show some humility, especially when you were strong.

I think right now we need to look back at the founding values of our country. Rise above partisanship, be less bitter when it comes to important matters that have to be solved.

I think it's very important to have a sense of balance in covering the war, but you don't have to be morally neutral about terrorism.

I think it's really good that you have great competition among news networks, and for that matter all the networks in general. It's bringing more and more people in to watching the news.

I think it is valuable and should be valued by its consumers. Charging for content forces discipline on journalists: they must produce things that people actually value.

I have a strong emotional respect for Steve.

I don't think there was enough skepticism because I think most of us kind of believed that Saddam Hussein was building biological, chemical, and perhaps even, nuclear weapons.

I do think it's important, if you're going to be very creative, to be a seeker.

I actually think Bill Gates is conventionally smarter, even though it's a dumb word, but mental processing power - I've watched him use four different screens, process information, get to the right answer, boom boom boom.

Especially right after 9/11. Especially when the war in Afghanistan is going on. There was a real sense that you don't get that critical of a government that's leading us in war time.

But the point is to get a whole new generation of people and people in general more re-engaged in news, and this has happened a lot since September 11th of course.

Yeah, I think that his great creation was not any one product but a company in which creativity was connected to great engineering. And that will survive at least while the current people who trained under Steve are there.

When there are multiple versions of a story, you really have three ways to go. You can pick the most sensational version. You can try to balance things in your gut to get to what you think is the honest truth. Or you can err on the side of kindness.

He said, 'From then on, I realized that I was not just abandoned. I was chosen. I was special.' And I think that's the key to understanding Steve Jobs.

And if you don't have your ears open, you're not going to be able to figure out what you should be doing.

Polite and velvety leaders, who take care to avoid bruising others, are generally not as effective at forcing change.

Just being the seeker, somebody whose open to spiritual enlightenment, is in itself the important thing and it's the reward for being a seeker in this world.

For some people, miracles serve as evidence of God's existence.

I think when money starts to corrupt journalism, it undermines the journalism, and it undermines the credibility of the product, and you end up not succeeding.

I think one problem we've had is that people who are smart and creative and innovative as engineers went into financial engineering.

Smart people are a dime a dozen. What matters is the ability to think different... to think out of the box.