Top 173 Quotes & Sayings by Paul Allen

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American businessman Paul Allen.

Last updated on December 3, 2024.

Paul Gardner Allen was an American business magnate, computer programmer, researcher, investor, and philanthropist. He co-founded Microsoft Corporation with childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which helped spark the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. Microsoft became the world's largest personal computer software company. Allen was ranked as the 44th-wealthiest person in the world by Forbes in 2018, with an estimated net worth of $20.3 billion at the time of his death.

American - Businessman | January 21, 1953 - October 15, 2018

Source: Wikipedia

My quest to expand access to space began more than a decade ago, when I teamed up with Burt Rutan at Scaled Composites to build SpaceShipOne. This innovative air-launched vehicle was the world's first private spacecraft to carry an astronaut into sub-orbital space.

Paul Allen

I got a taste when I was in Kenya a while ago of what medical care was in rural Africa. I was in a town of about 10,000 people, and a shipping container with a rusty microscope was their medical clinic.

Paul Allen

I enjoy creating new ideas, working on new creative projects.

Paul Allen

You could tell three things about Bill Gates pretty quickly. He was really smart. He was really competitive; he wanted to show you how smart he was. And he was really, really persistent.

Paul Allen

We've had some tough times, but we've hung in there.

Paul Allen

The thing you realize when you get into studying neuroscience, even a little bit, is that everything is connected to everything else. So it's as if the brain is trying to use everything at its disposal - what it is seeing, what it is hearing, what is the temperature, past experience.

Paul Allen

As quickly as it started, our business model evaporated. But while Traf-O-Data was technically a business failure, the understanding of microprocessors we absorbed was crucial to our future success.

Paul Allen

What should exist? To me, that's the most exciting question imaginable. What do we need that we don't have? How can we realize our potential?

Paul Allen

Part of life has to be about enjoying life and having different experiences, especially if you're with friends and you're on an adventure on a boat or a submarine - it's a lot of fun.

Paul Allen

As a programmer, you're working with very simple structures compared to the brain. So I was always fascinated by how the brain works.

Paul Allen

You've got to enjoy time with your family and friends, and if you're involved in sports franchises, those peak moments in playoff games. You have to enjoy life.

Paul Allen

As a species, we've always been discoverers and adventurers, and space and the deep ocean are some of the last frontiers.

Paul Allen

There are so many intricacies to our brain that won't be understood unless we start to look at the system as a whole. All these different details don't operate in isolation.

Paul Allen

To make real progress in A.I., we have to overcome the big challenges in the area of common sense.

Paul Allen

I grew up around books. When I first held the book and it was a substantive, tangible thing, and I thought of all the work that went into it, not just my work but everybody else's and the research and so forth, there's a sense of really have done something worthwhile.

Paul Allen

Our dream is to one day uncover the essence of what makes us human.

Paul Allen

Some people are motivated by a need for recognition, some by money, and some by a broad social goal. I start from a different place: from the love of ideas and the urge to put them into motion and see where they might lead.

Paul Allen

Some people can vent their anger, take a breath, and let it go, but I wasn't one of them.

Paul Allen

I was a programmer.

Paul Allen

In Seattle, I've talked about how Pete Carroll is such... I'm kind of surprised at the variety of styles that successful coaches can have. Some are very communicative and positive and energized - like, Pete Carroll has all that in spades. Some of them are more cerebral; some are more directive.

Paul Allen

Traditionally, Seattle has been a great sports town and great football town. What the Huskies have achieved over the years has been pretty amazing. That's how I got my first taste of football - when I went with my father to Husky Stadium.

Paul Allen

The biggest yacht that I have accommodates a submarine.

Paul Allen

I choose optimism. I hope to be a catalyst not only by providing financial resources but also by fostering a sense of possibility: encouraging top experts to collaborate across disciplines, challenge conventional thinking, and figure out ways to overcome some of the world's hardest problems.

Paul Allen

The promise of artificial intelligence and computer science generally vastly outweighs the impact it could have on some jobs in the same way that, while the invention of the airplane negatively affected the railroad industry, it opened a much wider door to human progress.

Paul Allen

I have to admit, between the Seahawks games and the Blazer games and playoffs games, we're talking about close to 100 games a year, so I don't really follow other sports a lot.

Paul Allen

I'm always trying to calculate the mathematical probability of certain outcomes.

Paul Allen

Everyone's dream is to take a pill - take a pill every day so you won't have Alzheimer's.

Paul Allen

If it hadn't been for our Traf-O-Data venture, and if it hadn't been for all that time spent on UW computers, you could argue that Microsoft might not have happened.

Paul Allen

Moore's Law-based technology is so much easier than neuroscience. The brain works in such a different way from the way a computer does.

Paul Allen

Languages evolve; ideas blend together. In computer technology, we all stand on others' shoulders.

Paul Allen

I'm a very private person that prefers a low profile.

Paul Allen

Technology is notorious for engrossing people so much that they don't always focus on balance and enjoy life at the same time.

Paul Allen

As someone who was basically a software engineer for many years, I became fascinated with how the brain functions and is put together and works in such a different fashion than computers do.

Paul Allen

The possible is constantly being redefined, and I care deeply about helping humanity move forward.

Paul Allen

With documentary-film projects, you hope you highlight an area of concern people haven't thought about before. A lot of times, I'm asking myself - 'This seems to be a significant problem. What can be done that hasn't been done?'

Paul Allen

My high school in Seattle, Lakeside, seemed conservative on the surface, but it was educationally progressive.

Paul Allen

Objectively speaking, Traf-O-Data was a failure as a company. Right as our business started to pick up, states began to provide their own traffic-counting services to local governments for free.

Paul Allen

You look at things you enjoy in your life, but much more important is what you can do to make the world a better place.

Paul Allen

I am very excited to be supporting one of the world's most visionary efforts to seek basic answers to some of the fundamental question about our universe and what other civilisations may exist elsewhere.

Paul Allen

In the computer industry, you've got an interdisciplinary team of people who can come together, attack the problem, and work in a collaborative style. You knock down one problem after another, cobble things together, and then hopefully turn the crank at some point.

Paul Allen

Those fortunate to achieve great wealth should put it to work for the good of humanity.

Paul Allen

The brain was designed by evolution, so each part of it is optimized for what it does, and it's incredibly, incredibly complex.

Paul Allen

From my youth, I'd never stopped thinking in the future tense.

Paul Allen

The best museums and museum exhibits about science or technology give you the feeling that, hey, this is interesting, but maybe I could do something here, too.

Paul Allen

Vulcan Inc. is a unique organization that unites commercial, philanthropic, research, policy, and technology innovation. Our goals are ambitious - from saving Africa's elephants to unlocking the secrets of the human brain to building sustainable communities and opening up access to space.

Paul Allen

Continuity is important in sports.

Paul Allen

When it comes to helping out, I don't believe in doing it for the media attention. My goal is to support the organizations that need help.

Paul Allen

In global warming, I think everyone is scratching their heads - are there technological things that can be brought to bear that can make a difference?

Paul Allen

In my own work, I've tried to anticipate what's coming over the horizon, to hasten its arrival, and to apply it to people's lives in a meaningful way.

Paul Allen

There are people out there who don't see value in intellectual property, and so they're always going to have a problem if there are lawsuits involving intellectual property.

Paul Allen

In the first eight or so years at Microsoft, we were always chained to our terminals, and after I got sick the first time, I decided that I was going to be more adventurous and explore more of the world.

Paul Allen

That would be such a life-changing thing, for us all to know that there are other beings out there who we could potentially communicate with, or maybe we are listening to a signal that they transmitted hundreds of millennia ago.

Paul Allen

In the early days at Asymetrix, we were focusing on business automation.

Paul Allen

If you think about making a difference in the community, my family has always had a strong interest in the arts. I'm always interested in finding ways to innovate... It's a blend; it's not a point focus.

Paul Allen

Once you become an owner of a team, you get so much more into the sport and you can't help it. So I really love NFL football now to the degree of following it much more than I did previously.

Paul Allen

What people don't realize is the human body and the brain are so well designed to do - by millions of years of evolution - what we do.

Paul Allen

As always, space remains an unforgiving frontier, and the skies overhead will surely present obstacles and setbacks that must be overcome. But hard challenges demand fresh approaches, and I'm optimistic that Stratolaunch will yield transformative benefits - not only for scientists and space entrepreneurs, but for all of us.

Paul Allen

While I sign off on trades or free agents, I've rarely overruled my basketball people's decisions. But I'm not shy about steering the discussion or pushing deeper if something doesn't make sense to me.

Paul Allen

That darn luxury tax is pretty painful.

Paul Allen

I was only in second grade when the Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. The night of his launch - April 12, 1961 - I went out onto the front porch and stared up at the stars, trying to see his capsule passing overhead. Like millions of others, I was enthralled by the idea of space exploration and have been ever since.

Paul Allen

Top 173 Quotes & Sayings by Paul Allen

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