Top 173 Quotes & Sayings by Paul Allen - Page 2

The brain is the most complex, challenging scientific puzzle we have ever tried to decode.

The NFL, as compared to the NBA, it's so physical and so emotional almost every play.

I remember having pizza at Shakey's in Vancouver, Washington in 1973 and talking about the fact that eventually, everyone is going to be online and have access to newspapers and stuff, and wouldn't people be willing to pay for information on a computer terminal.

The definition of the good life is doing creative things, whether making music, trying to figure out how to do a particular piece of code, or putting together investments.

Nobody really knows what it would take to create something that is self-aware or has a personality. I guess I could imagine a day when perhaps, if we can understand how it works in the human brain, which is unbelievably complicated, it could be possible.

I was the center on our fraternity team, but I was a center-eligible, so I was known for my ability to go out, and I was pretty sure-handed catching a pass in the flat about ten yards down the field. My father played high school football and was pretty good. He also played center, so I always relished the idea that we both ended up playing center.

Long periods can pass between the times you play for a championship, so you have to savor those moments.

Microprocessors were instantly attractive to us because you could build something for a fraction of the cost of conventional electronics. That's essentially what we did with the Traf-O-Data computer - only it was too narrow and challenging an area to try to build a service business in.

Anybody doing philanthropy has to find something that appeals to them from their own personal background or from intellectual curiosity.

The brain has this amazing level of almost fractal complexity to it. When you start looking at any part of it in detail, you realize that it's much more complex than you thought.

I'm trying to transmit the visions of creativity and build institutions that are incredibly catalytic to their fields.

We taught ourselves to simulate how microprocessors work using DEC computers so we could develop software even before our machine was built.

In order to be truly intelligent, computers must understand - that is probably the critical word.

I think few people in their lifetime have the chance to be involved in something like the creation of Microsoft - that's always going to be something I'm known for.

We know a certain amount about neurons. You can do fMRI and watch parts of the brain light up. But what happens in the middle is poorly understood.

No one knows the complete function of sleep. Is it to reset the brain or give it more of a rest period? Is it for cleaning the brain of all the garbage protein? For me, talking about these things as a non-biologist is fascinating.

I first got interested in the brain through computers.

The brain is one of the richest green fields of science. There's so much yet to be discovered.

Back to Microsoft days, I'm always looking for, 'OK, that's great, but what can go wrong?'

Go Seahawks! Go Blazers!

Sports is such a cyclical thing; it's often feast or famine. But what you try and do as an owner is build a winning organization.

It's part of the juice of sports that you tend to find certain sports figures that you cheer on from other cities and others that you're a bit skeptical about.

Even though Traf-O-Data wasn't a roaring success, it was seminal in preparing us to make Microsoft's first product a couple of years later.

If you have an analytical bent like I do, going back to my days as a programmer, you like to ask questions.

You have a certain number of dreams in your life you want to fulfill.

My mother, God bless her, forced me to take touch typing when I was 16.

In Portland, I am more involved in the details of trade discussions because I've been around that sport longer and can watch tape and can give some input to the drafting process. In football, not at all. It's so specialized.

It's always interesting to bring scientists together, because they typically have very polarized views.

I just try to stuff my brain with everything that I can read on what is going on in science at a very high level, and sometimes I see connections of what might need to be done.

Your dream, when you buy a sports franchise, is to win the championship, the Super Bowl.

I am generally fascinated by what are the big, challenging questions - that's behind my curiosity.

Any time you get to compete for the championship in a professional spot, it's just a magic thing.

There's a long history of artificial intelligence programs that try to mimic what the brain is doing, but they've all fallen short.

I think, as an owner, you really want to do the team right, the fans right, and the community right and build a winning organization.

The Ebola virus is unlike any health crisis we have ever experienced and needs a response unlike anything we have ever seen.

Some people are great at the pure mathematical things - like Bill Gates, he's great at math things. He loves to do puzzles. Me, I like to look at an overall landscape and try to figure out, how do you solve a problem?

It's very challenging to carve back market share.

I'm trying to show people that they can activate their own passions and find their own path.

I've lived in Boston.

Something that is characteristic of me is the breadth of my interests.

I'm not somebody that just has one or two things in life that are laserlike focused.

The thing is, once you're in the Super Bowl, you want to win. As time goes on, you want to win more and more.

If you have the chance to realize some of these dreams you had as a kid, and you have the opportunity, why not pursue that?

I grew up watching games with my father at Washington Husky Stadium. When I moved out to Seattle, I had a friend who would take me to Seahawks games in the 1980s.

At one point, I was the youngest owner in major league sports.

Somehow, I knew you had to have perfect eyesight to be a test pilot, and so that was it for my astronaut career.

You want someone who will challenge you back; sometimes, that's the way the best decisions get made.

One of the things I've come to appreciate about the brain is the importance of location. It's not just a set of interchangeable parts that you can swap in and out.

To me, it's the kind of interesting question the human race should be investing in. Is there intelligent life out there? Are there other beings out there?

Computers are really, basically, computing elements and a lot of memory. They are pretty easy to understand, as compared to the brain, which was designed by evolution.

I really do care about the health of the players. That's one of the tough things about the NFL - it's so physically tough on the players.

AI2 was born from a desire to create a system that could truly reason about knowledge, rather than just offer up what had been written on a subject before.

Blame me for having to type the backslash in DOS.

I think it's pretty unique to see a coach adjust to the talent he has and maximize the abilities of players he has and help them keep growing.

I'm trying to do some things with my brain institute to understand more about the impact of concussion on brain tissue, because we have some scientists over there who are really good at looking at brain tissue and the effects of things on brain tissue.

It turns out, if you go 1,000 feet down in the ocean, it's really dark, and the animals are really strange, but if you put on some Pink Floyd, it's fantastic.

Our net worth is ultimately defined not by dollars but rather by how well we serve others.

Whenever you make the Super Bowl, so many things - you have to have the good general manager and the coach and the great players, and you have to have not too many injuries - everything, game plans and everything, has to fall very much your way for that to happen.

General managers - I like to talk about the 'golden gut': general managers that not only can have a sense for the players that are going to perform beyond what people expect and get team chemistry right, but they also have to be able to make trades.

Facing your own mortality forces you to re-evaluate your priorities.