I'm a capitalist. I believe in capitalism. But capitalism only works if you have safety nets to deal with people who are naturally left behind and brutalized by it.

I firmly believe that the next great breakthrough in bioscience could come from a 15-year-old who downloads the human genome in Egypt.

Syria is on the back end of basically a decade-long drought. Over the last decade, farmers and herders have been ravaged in Syria forcing them to give up and move to urban areas. This has put a huge strain on urban resources, and it's surely one of the reasons for the uprising there.

Almost all the students who make it to Caltech, one of the best scientific universities in the world, come from public schools. So it can be done.

No, most of our political elite has not realized that the world is flat.

We are led by lawyers who do not understand either technology or balance sheets.

I'm from Minnesota. I'm optimistic. I mean, that's just who I am.