The belief that all wealth comes from stealing is popular in prisons and at Harvard.

In an information economy, entrepreneurs master the science of information in order to overcome the laws of the purely physical sciences. They can succeed because of the surprising power of the laws of information, which are conducive to human creativity. The central concept of information theory is a measure of freedom of choice. The principle of matter, on the other hand, is not liberty but limitation- it has weight and occupies space.

Real poverty is less a state of income than a state of mind.

Surely women's liberation is a most unpromising panacea. But the movement is working politically, because our sexuality is so confused, our masculinity so uncertain, and our families so beleaguered that no one knows what they are for or how they are sustained.

Enforced by genetics, sexual reproduction, perspective, and experience, the most manifest characteristic of human beings is their diversity. The freer an economy is, the more this human diversity of knowledge will be manifested. By contrast, political power originates in top-down processes-governments, monopolies, regulators, and elite institutions- all attempting to quell human diversity and impose order. Thus power always seeks centralization.

People cannot be expected to learn one expertise and just apply it routinely in a job. Your expertise is in steadily renewing your knowledge base and extending it to new areas. That lifelong cycle of learning really is the foundation of the new information organization and economy.

The key role of entrepreneurs, like the most crucial role of scientists, is not to fill in the gaps in an existing market or theory, but to generate entirely new markets or theories. . .They stand before a canvas as empty as any painter's; a page as blank as any poet's.