People try to treat technology as an object, and it can't be. It can only be a channel.

A remarkable thing about the Silicon Valley culture is that its status structure is so based on technical accomplishment and prowess.

People have to be able to make money off their brains and their hearts. Or else we're all going to starve, and it's the machines that'll get good.

We should talk about the ultimate cause of war. It's a question we should never stop asking, because if we do, there's a chance, however remote, that we might miss an opportunity to reduce the occurrence of war.

At the turn of the [21st] century it was really Sergey Brin at Google who just had the thought of, well, if we give away all the information services, but we make money from advertising, we can make information free and still have capitalism. But the problem with that is it reneges on the social contract where people still participate in the formal economy. And it's a kind of capitalism that's totally self-defeating because it's so narrow. It's a winner-take-all capitalism that's not sustaining.

Governments oppress people, but so do mobs. You need to avoid both to make progress.

An economy where advertisers thrive while journalists and artists struggle, reflects the values of a society more interested in deception and manipulation than in truth and beauty