We’re taught to do things the right way. But if you want to discover something that other people haven’t, you need to do things the wrong way. Initiate a failure by doing something that’s very silly, unthinkable, naughty, dangerous. Watching why that fails can take you on a completely different path. It’s exciting, actually. To me, solving problems is a bit like a drug. You’re on it, and you can’t get off.

After the idea, there is plenty of time to learn the technology

If you can't be unconventional, be obtuse. Be deliberately obtuse, because there are 5 billion people out there thinking in train tracks, and thinking what they have been taught to think.

The Web is fascinating and transformative, but it's an easy, flashy, get-rich-quick option to the hard graft of proper industry.

If you really want to improve technology, if you want things to work better and be better, you've got to protect the person who spends a lot of effort, money, and time developing that new technology.

Fear is always a good motivator.

Failure is so much more interesting because you learn from it. That's what we should be teaching children at school, that being successful the first time, there's nothing in it. There's no interest, you learn nothing actually.