The iPhone is made on a global scale, and it blends computers, the Internet, communications, and artificial intelligence in one blockbuster, game-changing innovation. It reflects so many of the things that our contemporary world is good at - indeed, great at.

There's so much free material on the Internet you can learn from, and some people are pure self-starters: they pick up computers and teach themselves everything. Certainly there are millions of people like that. But at the same time, I think it's a pretty small percentage of the population.

In chess, computers show that what we call 'strategy' is reducible to tactics, ultimately. It only looks creative to us. They are still just glorified cash registers. This should make us feel uncomfortable, whether or not we think computers will ever be good composers of music or artistic painters.

I sometimes say I am a 'happiness optimist' but a 'revenue pessimist.'

We will be returning to historical levels of inequality. We'll view post-war America as a kind of strange interlude not to be repeated. It won't be the dreams that we all had that virtually all incomes go up in lockstep at three percent a year. It hurts to give that up.

I think people who are not rich can be extremely happy. And I think the chances to be happy in this new world - with many more opportunities to be creative, to be online, to educate yourself - there'll be a lot more chances to be happy. It's not to say everyone will take them, but there will be a lot of new paths to opportunity.

Sports is remarkably cognitive. I think it's underrated just how smart it is. Actually, if I had more time, I would spend more time with sports. Watching it, reading about it, I think it's oddly underrated.

For the U.S., I think we should have a carbon tax, for environmental reasons.

The way to make the world a better place, through your eating, is simply to eat a bit less meat. Local is sometimes good, sometimes bad. But even when it's good, its environmental impact is relatively small compared to other possible improvements.

Economics is everywhere, and understanding economics can help you make better decisions and lead a happier life.

Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.

There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.

I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.

False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.

Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.

We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death.

To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.

We must have constantly present in our minds the difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would no longer be possessed of liberty.

Peace is a natural effect of trade.

The less men think, the more they talk.

I'm a quiet person, and I live a quiet, pleasant, ordinary, simple life.

Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded.

A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.

A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.

It is extraordinary that when you are acquainted with a whole family you can forget about them.

Whoever said money can't buy happiness simply didn't know where to go shopping.

What is marriage, is marriage protection or religion, is marriage renunciation or abundance, is marriage a stepping-stone or an end. What is marriage.

Counting is the religion of this generation it is its hope and its salvation.

Romance is everything.

The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.

This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.

It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

Money is always there but the pockets change; it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money.

The thing that differentiates man from animals is money.

I could undertake to be an efficient pupil if it were possible to find an efficient teacher.

Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.

There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer.

In a war everybody always knows all about Switzerland, in peace times it is just Switzerland but in war time it is the only country that everybody has confidence in, everybody.

It is very easy to love alone.

It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.

I know what Germans are. They are a funny people. They are always choosing someone to lead them in a direction which they do not want to go.

In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. That is what makes America what it is.

There is too much fathering going on just now and there is no doubt about it fathers are depressing.

It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanism of friendship.

Writing only leads to more writing.

A woman who thinks she is intelligent demands the same rights as man. An intelligent woman gives up.

I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it.

The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.

Be happy. It's one way of being wise.