Top 96 Quotes & Sayings by Martin Cooper - Page 2

I think projects often fail because people do not have a clear understanding at the start what they are trying to deliver.

If you asked me what the most important thing in my life is, it's learning.

My wife has forced me to wear designer jeans, and I find... there must be two or three hundred different kinds of jeans you can wear, all of which are made out of denim and look roughly the same. People are different. They have different tastes, different bodies. Cellphones ought to be the same.

I'd been taking things apart and inventing things since I was a little kid... I still have memories as a child trying to really understand how things work.

As soon as I get a typical day, I'll know I'm in trouble. I like doing different things all the time.

When you get involved in a startup, you have to be passionate.

Anyone who dials a phone while driving is flirting with death. And anyone who texts while driving is insane.

I'm at the doctor's office. I'm in the waiting room. And there's this guy on his cell phone, talking really loud. Does he think he owns the place? Apparently. I think this is so offensive. But you have to remember: It doesn't take a cell phone to make people rude. People were rude before there were cell phones.

I think if you have a big enough wallet you can solve anything but the key is to solve it with the least amount of expenditure.

Even though you can't get along without your smartphone, there are not many essential services on your smartphone. They're mostly convenience; you could live without it. Essential means you die without it. A gadget that warns you're about to have a heart attack - that's essential. We're about to go into that phase with smartphones.

What we did with this mobile telephone was create a revolution. Before the mobile phone existed we were calling a place, now we are calling a person.

I like to think about the future and how things can be done better than they are now. That's what engineers do.

Star Trek made dreaming legitimate.

Once you've lived in Del Mar or the San Diego area, why would you want to live anyplace else? It's the neatest place, whether it's the culture or the small-town atmosphere the whole San Diego area has.

I'm a science-fiction fan. All science fiction ends up being reality.

We should be focused on how to make people's lives better. That is the purpose of technology.

Engineers and entrepreneurs are fundamentally dissatisfied with the way the world is and want to make it better. There are so many things you could do with technology if you can match it up with real problems.

I think that wireless has the opportunity to solve a whole bunch of problems, including I believe world poverty.

There were a lot of naysayers over the years. People would say, 'Why are we spending all of this money? Are you sure this cellular thing will turn out to be something?'

Whatever happened to courtesy? What can be so urgent that you have to look down at your phone in the middle of a dinner conversation with people who matter to you? You can't wait five minutes before staring at your phone?

We thought our vision was right, which was that someday everyone would be walking around carrying phones with them.

I have trouble going to sleep at night, because you always get the feeling that there is another thing you could do.

We all know how tough children are with toys. It turns out grownups are much worse.

My rule is, if you want to build something that does all things for all people, it's not going to work real well.

WattUp is one of those rare breakthroughs that recognizes that the so-called 'battery' problem in wireless devices is solved with a charging solution that is transparent to the user. The cell phone with a dead battery can become a relic of the past. The days of wired, mat-based and proximity charging are over.

Cellular companies don't innovate, they just buy more spectrum.

We predicted the concept of a telephone that isn't tied to a wall or a desk. We anticipated that everyone would have a cell phone. We joked that when you're born you would be assigned a cell phone and if you didn't answer you had died.

When you are doing one thing - talking on your phone, texting, whatever - you are automatically not doing something else. What is the greatest scarcity in the world today? It's not oil. It's time. Time is precious. Don't throw it away.

People want to talk to other people - not a house, or an office, or a car. Given a choice, people will demand the freedom to communicate wherever they are, unfettered by the infamous copper wire. It is that freedom we sought to vividly demonstrate in 1973.

We had no idea that in as little as 35 years more than half the people on Earth would have cellular telephones, and they give the phones away to people for nothing.

Cellular phones will absolutely not replace local wire systems.

As I walked down the street while talking on the phone, sophisticated New Yorkers gaped at the sight of someone actually moving around while making a phone call. Remember that in 1973, there weren't cordless telephones, let alone cellular phones. I made numerous calls, including one where I crossed the street while talking to a New York radio reporter - probably one of the more dangerous things I have ever done in my life.

If you think you can experience the power of the Internet on a 1-inch screen, you've got to be out of your mind.

Whenever you create a universal device that does all things for all people, it does not do any things well.

The best way to get people to think outside the box is not to create the box in the first place.

When I was young, the concept of being a dreamer was a very negative one. If you were a dreamer, you were useless. You didn't contribute anything to society. But Star Trek made dreaming legitimate, and I think that was a huge, huge contribution.