Throughout his life, Albert Einstein would retain the intuition and the awe of a child. He never lost his sense of wonder at the magic of nature's phenomena-magnetic fields, gravity, inertia, acceleration, light beams-which grown-ups find so commonplace. He retained the ability to hold two thoughts in his mind simultaneously, to be puzzled when they conflicted, and to marvel when he could smell an underlying unity. "People like you and me never grow old," he wrote a friend later in life. "We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.
Walter IsaacsonI actually think Bill Gates is conventionally smarter, even though it's a dumb word, but mental processing power - I've watched him use four different screens, process information, get to the right answer, boom boom boom.
Walter IsaacsonJobs insisted that Apple focus on just two or three priorities at a time. โThere is no one better at turning off the noise that is going on around him,โ Cook said. โThat allows him to focus on a few things and say no to many things. Few people are really good at that.
Walter Isaacsoni had no idea what i wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out.
Walter IsaacsonI have my own theory about why decline happens at companies like IBM or Microsoft. The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesmen, because theyโre the ones who can move the needle on revenues, not the product engineers and designers. So the salespeople end up running the company.
Walter Isaacson