Quote

I think Leonardo da Vinci teaches us the value of both being focused on things that fascinate us but also, at times, being distracted and deciding to pursue some shiny new idea that you happen to stumble upon. Balancing intense focus with being interested in a whole lot of different things is something that we have to do in the Internet age.

Walter Isaacson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Walter Isaacson
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: May 20
Biographer
Journalist
Writer
New Orleans
Louisiana
Also
Focus
Distracted
Whole
Happen
Teaches
Fascinate
Different
Teach
Pursue
Vinci
Something
Age
Intense
Leonardo
Things
Values
Focused
Shiny
Think
Upon
Interested
Balancing
Thinking
Times
Internet
Stumble
Idea
Value
Deciding

More quotes by Walter Isaacson

Image
By the end of his career, he [Steve Jobs] has proven that he can do the impossible, and he has gathered probably the most loyal team of eight players of any business in America.
Walter Isaacson
Image
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
Image
Smart people are a dime a dozen. What matters is the ability to think different... to think out of the box.
Walter Isaacson
Image
What Einstein was able to do was - to use a cliche - think out of the box.
Walter Isaacson
Image
Asked about the fact that Apple's iTunes software for Windows computers was extremely popular, Jobs joked, 'It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell.
Walter Isaacson
Image
I think when you're looking for people to interview, you want to make it fair and honest. You're not just bringing people on so you can beat them up or, you know, make fools out of them or something
Walter Isaacson
Image
Mainly, the reason people who didn't succeed had trouble because they had trouble forming teams. They didn't know how to collaborate.
Walter Isaacson
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Leonardo da Vinci was lucky to be born the same year that Johannes Gutenberg opened his printing shop. As a young person, he could get information about whatever struck his curiosity. The Internet is to our age what Gutenberg's press was to his, so he would have loved being alive today.
Walter Isaacson
Image
Sometimes, to relieve stress, he would soak his feet in the toilet, a practice that was not as soothing for his collegues.
Walter Isaacson
Image
It seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan ...[Showing the misery of Afghanistan ran the risk of] promoting enemy propaganda...we must talk about how the Taliban are using civilian shields and how the Taliban have harboured the terrorists responsible for killing close up to 5,000 innocent people.
Walter Isaacson
Image
There are parts of his life and personality that are extremely messy, and that's the truth
Walter Isaacson
Image
Jobs has within him sort of this conflict, but he doesn't quite see it as a conflict between being hippie-ish and anti-materialistic but wanting to sell things like Wozniak's board. Wanting to create a business.
Walter Isaacson
Image
I think that we shouldn't be fixated all the time on the ups and downs of the weekly ratings, of the quarter-hour ratings.
Walter Isaacson
Image
The childhood that Paul and Clara Jobs created for their new son was, in many ways, a stereotype of the late 1950s. When Steve was two they adopted a girl they named Patty, and three years later they moved to a tract house in the suburbs.
Walter Isaacson
Image
He had the attitude that he could do anything, and therefore so can you. He put his life in my hands. So that made me do something I didn't think I could do.... If you trust him, you can do things. If he's decided that something should happen, then he's just going to make it happen. (Elizabeth Holmes)
Walter Isaacson
Image
On the day he unveiled the Macintosh, a reporter from Popular Science asked Jobs what type of market research he had done. Jobs responded by scoffing, Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?
Walter Isaacson
Image
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
Image
Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.
Walter Isaacson