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...never let a passion for the perfect take precedence over pragmatism.

Walter Isaacson

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Walter Isaacson
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: May 20
Biographer
Journalist
Writer
New Orleans
Louisiana
Perfect
Take
Never
Pragmatism
Precedence
Passion

More quotes by Walter Isaacson

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But the point is to get a whole new generation of people and people in general more re-engaged in news, and this has happened a lot since September 11th of course.
Walter Isaacson
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I think it's very important to have a sense of balance in covering the war, but you don't have to be morally neutral about terrorism.
Walter Isaacson
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For some people, miracles serve as evidence of God's existence.
Walter Isaacson
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I've asked Jobs why he didn't get an operation then and he said, 'I didn't want my body to be opened... I didn't want to be violated in that way.'
Walter Isaacson
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I used to be an angry man myself. I’m a recovering assaholic so I could recognize that in Steve. (quoting Jean-Louis Gassée)
Walter Isaacson
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Polite and velvety leaders, who take care to avoid bruising others, are generally not as effective at forcing change.
Walter Isaacson
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One of the great pressures we're facing in journalism now is it's a lot cheaper to hire thumb suckers and pundits and have talk shows on the air than actually have bureaus and reporters
Walter Isaacson
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If you want to be a great American, you have got to understand Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, how the American Revolution happened. I think if you want to be a good citizen of the digital age, it helps to feel comfortable with both the people and the ways of thinking that created the digital revolution.
Walter Isaacson
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I think that genius comes not just from having great mental processing power. It comes from being able to, as Steve Jobs' ad said, think different.
Walter Isaacson
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I think one problem we've had is that people who are smart and creative and innovative as engineers went into financial engineering.
Walter Isaacson
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I think America is really well-positioned, because we do train people to be creative and sometimes resist authority, which helps in being an innovator. I think you're going to see for the next phase of the revolution all sorts of wonderful ways of connecting art and literature and journalism into new forms of digital expression.
Walter Isaacson
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I think the biggest innovations of the twenty-first century will be the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning, just like the digital one was when I was his age.
Walter Isaacson
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You should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last. Excerpt From: Walter, Isaacson. “Steve Jobs.” Simon & Schuster, 2011-10-23T21:00:00+00:00. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.
Walter Isaacson
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Let's crowd source, curate, and add royalties to books
Walter Isaacson
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Steve has a reality distortion field.” When Hertzfeld looked puzzled, Tribble elaborated. “In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything. It wears off when he’s not around, but it makes it hard to have realistic schedules.
Walter Isaacson
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When you write biographies, whether it's about Ben Franklin or Einstein, you discover something amazing: They are human.
Walter Isaacson
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It's about doing something larger than yourself. It's about serving this world, helping others.
Walter Isaacson
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Without Steve Jobs, you would have well-designed computers, probably open and not integrated, but they wouldn't have sex appeal, they wouldn't have romance.
Walter Isaacson
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Simply handing over your iPod to a friend, your blind date, or the total stranger sitting next to you on the plane opens you up like a book. (Steven Levy)
Walter Isaacson
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One of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness. Such men make this cosmos and its construction the pivot of their emotional life, in order to find the peace and security which they cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.
Walter Isaacson