History can't give attention to what's been lost, hidden, or deliberately buried; it is mostly a telling of success, not the partial failures that enabled success.

For centuries before Google, MIT, and IDEO, modern hotbeds of innovation, we struggled to explain any kind of creation, from the universe itself to the multitudes of ideas around us. While we can make atomic bombs, and dry-clean silk ties, we still don't have satisfying answers for simple questions like: Where do songs come from? Are there an infinite variety of possible kinds of cheese? How did Shakespeare and Stephen King invent so much, while we're satisfied watching sitcom reruns? Our popular answers have been unconvincing, enabling misleading, fantasy-laden myths to grow strong.

Big thoughts are fun to romanticize, but it's many small insights coming together that bring big ideas into the world.

Commit yourself to taking enough risks that you will fail some of the time. If you're not failing, we're not doing something sufficiently difficult or creative.

When I'm the speaker, I know that special moment [just before speaking] is the only time I will have the entire audience's full attention. Unless an alien spaceship crash-lands on stage midway through the talk, the silence before I begin is the most powerful moment I have. What defines how well I'll do starts with how I use the power of that moment.

Experiment is the expected failure to deliberately learn something.

The way you find the answers to your problems will be unique to you.