The really basic stuff that fuels 30-year job booms almost always comes from government research, stuff like biotech, the transistor, the Internet. The idea that private capital can handle the early spade work is a joke.

I am not excited about Bitcoin. I think it's an outrage that, in an era of global warming, there are racks of servers next to the Columbia River. I wish I could explain to the salmon that we've created a dam generating hydroelectric power so that we can generate a fake currency.

Sometimes I wish I was less of a maniac; sometimes I wish I was more.

When I was trying to write a novel, I ran out of money, and I was delivering packages on a bicycle. And I finally connected with these guys who started a software company, and almost serendipitously fell into that. I felt like they were goofy guys and that I was a goofy guy.

To build a great business, you have to do something hard just to be able to withstand all the competition that will later come your way.

Funny money has always been the reason housing prices have risen too fast. First, it was liar loans and negative-amortizing mortgages, where the total amount you owed increased rather than decreased every month. We all know how that ended, with the global financial crisis of 2008.

We need to create technologies - and a culture of respect, and an updated legal doctrine, too - that allow creative folks to make money from their own efforts.

When we talk about a city's cost of living, we don't mean food, transportation, or clothing, which cost about the same everywhere. We mean housing.

I think the company that has the clearest set of values is Amazon. That company knows what it is. It may be that it's not your cup of tea, but every single person at that company knows what the Amazon values are.

What's most revolutionary about Uber is not the tool that consumers use but the fact that the only equipment needed by its drivers is their iPhone.

Everybody has been told already that they're too shy, too aggressive, too emotional, too reserved. They know what their fatal flaw is. They know the one thing to do to get better. But they just don't commit to changing because they feel a little bit in love with it, a little bit in love with the way they've been.

From squalls, jibes, and other sudden calamities, I learned you don't always get to decide when you've got to make a decision.

Folks are leaving Silicon Valley, mostly because they can't afford to stay.

In some ways, it's better to be undervalued a little than overvalued a lot, just because it's still easy to believe our best days are ahead of us.

Just because you started your careers in a certain role, let's say hardware engineering, does not mean you'll end your careers in hardware.

There will be times you make decisions that actually detract from growth.

When I think of revenue growth, I think of the words 'mix' and 'shift.'

I'm the ninth CEO of IBM. Every one of my predecessors has steered through a technological shift, and every one left the company in a better position than the person before them and prepared this company with a very strong balance sheet to allow it to continue to invest for the next shift.

I often sit back and say, 'Be sure about what I believe.'

I was always surrounded by people that wanted to mentor you.

You will have many more goals in the years ahead. But do not confuse a goal with a purpose.

Work on something that matters. Have courage.

Planes don't fly, trains don't run, banks don't operate without much of what IBM does.

You can engineer change.