Top 173 Quotes & Sayings by Paul Allen

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American businessman Paul Allen.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
Paul Allen

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.

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.
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.
I enjoy creating new ideas, working on new creative projects. — © Paul Allen
I enjoy creating new ideas, working on new creative projects.
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.
We've had some tough times, but we've hung in there.
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.
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.
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?
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.
As a programmer, you're working with very simple structures compared to the brain. So I was always fascinated by how the brain works.
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.
As a species, we've always been discoverers and adventurers, and space and the deep ocean are some of the last frontiers.
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.
To make real progress in A.I., we have to overcome the big challenges in the area of common sense. — © Paul Allen
To make real progress in A.I., we have to overcome the big challenges in the area of common sense.
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.
Our dream is to one day uncover the essence of what makes us human.
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.
Some people can vent their anger, take a breath, and let it go, but I wasn't one of them.
I was a programmer.
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.
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.
The biggest yacht that I have accommodates a submarine.
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.
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.
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.
I'm always trying to calculate the mathematical probability of certain outcomes.
Everyone's dream is to take a pill - take a pill every day so you won't have Alzheimer's.
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.
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.
Languages evolve; ideas blend together. In computer technology, we all stand on others' shoulders.
I'm a very private person that prefers a low profile.
Technology is notorious for engrossing people so much that they don't always focus on balance and enjoy life at the same time.
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.
The possible is constantly being redefined, and I care deeply about helping humanity move forward.
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?'
My high school in Seattle, Lakeside, seemed conservative on the surface, but it was educationally progressive.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Those fortunate to achieve great wealth should put it to work for the good of humanity.
The brain was designed by evolution, so each part of it is optimized for what it does, and it's incredibly, incredibly complex.
From my youth, I'd never stopped thinking in the future tense.
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.
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.
Continuity is important in sports.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
In the early days at Asymetrix, we were focusing on business automation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That darn luxury tax is pretty painful.
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.
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