Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked.

To the extent that we ignore this, forget about it, become complacent, or believe that it is so infinite that it can take care of itself, we are in trouble.

Too many people who go to the best schools, and get great grades, are confronted with a choice of trivial work that is very high paid, and has some sort of surface status, like senior partner in a law firm, or corporate executive, but most of the work can be done by anybody.

People don’t have the slightest idea about how they do reasoning, and intuition is a polite word for guessing. And some people think that there’s some special kind of intuition which gives you the right answer in a magical way.

All sorts of torturers, dictators, fanatics, and demagogues struggling for power by way of a few loudly shouted slogans also enjoy their jobs, and they too perform their duties with inventive fervor. Well, yes, but they “know.” They know, and whatever they know is enough for them once and for all. They don’t want to find out about anything else, since that might diminish their arguments’ force. And any knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.

But poets are the worst. Their work is hopelessly unphotogenic. Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while this person writes down seven lines only to cross out one of them fifteen minutes later, and then another hour passes, during which nothing happens … Who could stand to watch this kind of thing?