The cost of electronics in a modern car now exceeds the cost of its stall.

MIT is governed by a second, even higher rule: the inalienable right of academic freedom.

The wild, the absurd, the seemingly crazy: this kind of thinking is where new ideas come from ... The people capable of such playful thought carry forward their childish qualities and childhood dreams, applying them in areas where most of us get stuck, victims of our adult seriousness. Staying a child isn't easy.

Nations have the wrong granularity. They’re too small to be global and too big to be local, and all they can think about is competing.

You can see the future best through peripheral vision.

Linux is its own worst enemy: it's splintered, it has different distributions, it's too complex to run for most people.

Taxes will eventually become a voluntary process, with the possible exception of real estate - the one physical thing that does not move easily and has computable value. The US has a jump-start on the practice, in that 65 percent of local school funds come from real estate taxes - a practice Europeans consider odd and ill advised. But wait until that's all there is left to tax, when the rest of the things we buy and sell come from everywhere, anywhere, and nowhere.