I don't want to be the oldest anything in America. Sorry about that.

The optimum telephone is one that I think some day is gonna be embedded behind your ear. It's gonna have an extraordinarily powerful computer running the cell phone.

I think what is going to happen in the future is more customization, more personalization. We all are different and we ought to be able to customize and have a phone that does exactly what we want it to do - that is so easy to use that we don't even have to think about it. That's what the dream is.

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.

We had no idea that things like Facebook and Twitter, and all these other concepts, would ever happen.

The more we learn about new communications, the more capacity we need, and that is going to keep going on forever. That's been happening since radio was invented, and that's going to keep going.

Bell Labs was a fantastic research organization but having them create and market new products for the world was terrible. They were not good marketers and yet it was AT&T engineers who were deciding what the products of the future were.

The notion that there's finite spectrum is mostly wrong.

Cellular was the forerunner to true wireless communications.

Just think of what a world it would be if we could measure the characteristics of your body when you get sick and transmit those directly to a doctor or a computer. You could get diagnosed and cured instantly and wirelessly.

People thought I was crazy thinking about a phone you can just put in your pocket.

The biggest innovation of all is social networking, and cellular technology is the facilitator for social networking. People are mobile; social networking is people, and the only way people connect with each other is wirelessly.

I do like to get away from technology. I still read a lot. Having said that, most of my reading is on computers or a Kindle or an iPad.

When I go skiing, I may carry a phone, but it's there for safety purposes. I'm not one of these guys that reads his email while he's riding up on the chair lift.

The only thing I don't like is being called the 'grandfather of the cellphone' because that makes me a little older than I prefer to be.

Somehow in the last 100 years, every time there is a problem of getting more spectrum, there is a technology that comes along that solves that problem.

Every two and a half years, every spectrum crisis has gotten solved, and that's going to keep happening.

I use Verizon. My wife uses Cingular. I also have an AT&T phone for the car.

It doesn't take a cell phone to make a person rude. There are rude people all over the place. But people are learning. I have never heard a cell phone ring in the movies. We are going to learn how to live with the advantages of new technology.

The public doesn't adopt radical concepts very quickly.

I wouldn't use a phone with less than a 4-inch screen anymore.

I think an engineer has not matured until he or she has conceived of a product and participated in every stage of bringing it to fruition, if that makes sense. And not many engineers get to do all of those stages.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Star Trek made dreaming legitimate.

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

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

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

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?

Yes, I was the one people credit with inventing the cell phone. Now, whenever anyone gets a dropped call, they blame me.

The only thing that was in my mind when we made that first phone call was, 'Is it going to work?' We had all these parts hand soldered together, engineers standing by with the soldering iron - just in case.

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?'

A telephone number shouldn't represent a home or a car or a restaurant, but instead a person.