I will talk mainly about science because that is what I have studied. But so far as I know, and I've been told by others, much of what I say applies to many fields. Outstanding work is characterized very much the same way in most fields, but I will confine myself to science.

I spoke earlier about planting acorns so that oaks will grow. You can't always know exactly where to be, but you can keep active in places where something might happen. And even if you believe that great science is a matter of luck, you can stand on a mountain top where lightning strikes; you don't have to hide in the valley where you're safe.

Most great scientists know many important problems. They have something between 10 and 20 important problems for which they are looking for an attack. And when they see a new idea come up, one hears them say ``Well that bears on this problem.'' They drop all the other things and get after it.

The great scientists, when an opportunity opens up, get after it and they pursue it. They drop all other things. They get rid of other things and they get after an idea because they had already thought the thing through. Their minds are prepared; they see the opportunity and they go after it. Now of course lots of times it doesn't work out, but you don't have to hit many of them to do some great science. It's kind of easy. One of the chief tricks is to live a long time!

He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder.

You should do your job in such a fashion that others can build on top of it, so they will indeed say, ``Yes, I've stood on so and so's shoulders and I saw further.'' The essence of science is cumulative. By changing a problem slightly you can often do great work rather than merely good work. Instead of attacking isolated problems, I made the resolution that I would never again solve an isolated problem except as characteristic of a class.

by altering the problem, by looking at the thing differently, you can make a great deal of difference in your final productivity because you can either do it in such a fashion that people can indeed build on what you've done, or you can do it in such a fashion that the next person has to essentially duplicate again what you've done. It isn't just a matter of the job, it's the way you write the report, the way you write the paper, the whole attitude. It's just as easy to do a broad, general job as one very special case. And it's much more satisfying and rewarding!

it is not sufficient to do a job, you have to sell it. `Selling' to a scientist is an awkward thing to do. It's very ugly; you shouldn't have to do it. The world is supposed to be waiting, and when you do something great, they should rush out and welcome it. But the fact is everyone is busy with their own work. You must present it so well that they will set aside what they are doing, look at what you've done, read it, and come back and say, ``Yes, that was good.'' I suggest that when you open a journal, as you turn the pages, you ask why you read some articles and not others. You had better write your report so when it is published in the Physical Review, or wherever else you want it, as the readers are turning the pages they won't just turn your pages but they will stop and read yours. If they don't stop and read it, you won't get credit.

I think it is very definitely worth the struggle to try and do first-class work because the truth is, the value is in the struggle more than it is in the result. The struggle to make something of yourself seems to be worthwhile in itself. The success and fame are sort of dividends, in my opinion.

He had his personality defect of wanting total control and was not willing to recognize that you need the support of the system. You find this happening again and again; good scientists will fight the system rather than learn to work with the system and take advantage of all the system has to offer. It has a lot, if you learn how to use it. It takes patience, but you can learn how to use the system pretty well, and you can learn how to get around it. After all, if you want a decision `No', you just go to your boss and get a `No' easy. If you want to do something, don't ask, do it. Present him with an accomplished fact. Don't give him a chance to tell you `No'. But if you want a `No', it's easy to get a `No'.

Amusement, yes, anger, no. Anger is misdirected. You should follow and cooperate rather than struggle against the system all the time.

I found out many times, like a cornered rat in a real trap, I was surprisingly capable. I have found that it paid to say, ``Oh yes, I'll get the answer for you Tuesday,'' not having any idea how to do it. By Sunday night I was really hard thinking on how I was going to deliver by Tuesday. I often put my pride on the line and sometimes I failed, but as I said, like a cornered rat I'm surprised how often I did a good job. I think you need to learn to use yourself. I think you need to know how to convert a situation from one view to another which would increase the chance of success.

I do go in to strictly talk to somebody and say, ``Look, I think there has to be something here. Here's what I think I see ...'' and then begin talking back and forth. But you want to pick capable people. To use another analogy, you know the idea called the `critical mass.' If you have enough stuff you have critical mass. There is also the idea I used to call `sound absorbers'. When you get too many sound absorbers, you give out an idea and they merely say, ``Yes, yes, yes.'' What you want to do is get that critical mass in action; ``Yes, that reminds me of so and so,'' or, ``Have you thought about that or this?'' When you talk to other people, you want to get rid of those sound absorbers who are nice people but merely say, ``Oh yes,'' and to find those who will stimulate you right back.

I believed, in my early days, that you should spend at least as much time in the polish and presentation as you did in the original research. Now at least 50% of the time must go for the presentation. It's a big, big number.

Luck favors a prepared mind; luck favors a prepared person. It is not guaranteed; I don't guarantee success as being absolutely certain. I'd say luck changes the odds, but there is some definite control on the part of the individual.

If you read all the time what other people have done you will think the way they thought. If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what a lot of creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one. So yes, you need to keep up. You need to keep up more to find out what the problems are than to read to find the solutions. The reading is necessary to know what is going on and what is possible. But reading to get the solutions does not seem to be the way to do great research. So I'll give you two answers. You read; but it is not the amount, it is the way you read that counts.

your dreams are, to a fair extent, a reworking of the experiences of the day. If you are deeply immersed and committed to a topic, day after day after day, your subconscious has nothing to do but work on your problem. And so you wake up one morning, or on some afternoon, and there's the answer.

It's crazy how so much industry conf content is an ad these days. Ads obfuscate and conflate truth and opinion.

This is why events like Handmade Seattle or Strange Loop get so much love. They are about technology and people and values, not tools and companies.

When I write a talk, I almost always just want you to walk away thinking about the technology you create as an instrument for advancing your values, and a lens through which to view the world with those values.

if I do my job right, you won't go back and use the library I talked about, or whatever. You'll think about the values you're advancing when you build your technology, and think about the perspective it reveals to its users and audiences.

if you just think about the business model of the internet as — there’s a box that you can upload some content into, and then there’s an algorithm between you and an audience, and some audience will find the stuff you put in the box, and then you put an infinity amount of stuff into the box, all of that breaks.

more and more of the stuff that you consume is designed around pushing you towards a transaction. That’s weird. I think there’s a vast amount of white space in the culture for things that are not directly transactable.

We constantly ask huge amounts of the population to do things that are very rote. Keep inputting this data on forms, keep filling out this tax form. Some lawyers arguing for the Supreme Court, a lot of them just write up various contracts. And that’s a good job in the sense that it pays well, it’s inside work, but it doesn’t ask you to be that full of a human being.

I think a lot of organizations are not set up for a lot of people to use judgment and discernment. They treat a lot of people like machines, and they don’t want them doing things that are complicated and step out of line and poke at the assumptions in the Excel doc. They want the Excel doc ported over without any mistakes.

I think a lot of organizations are not set up for a lot of people to use judgment and discernment. They treat a lot of people like machines, and they don’t want them doing things that are complicated and step out of line and poke at the assumptions in the Excel doc.

I distinctly remember life before computers. It’s an experience that I had quite viscerally. And that shapes my view of these tools. It shapes my view of these companies. Well, there’s a huge generation now that only grew up in this way. There’s a teenage generation right now that is only growing up in this way. And I think their natural inclination is to say, well, this sucks. I want my own thing. I want my own system of consuming information. I want my own brands and institutions.And I don’t think that these big platforms are ready for that moment. I think that they think they can constantly be information monopolies while they are fending off A.I.-generated content from their own A.I. systems. So somewhere in there all of this stuff does break. And the optimism that you are sensing from me is, well, hopefully we build some stuff that does not have these huge dependencies on platform companies that have no interest at the end of the line except a transaction.

these models in their most reductive essence are just statistical representations of the past. They are not great at new ideas.And I think that the power of human beings sort of having new ideas all the time, that’s the thing that the platforms won’t be able to find. That’s why the platforms feel old. Social platforms like enter a decay state where everyone’s making the same thing all the time. It’s because we’ve optimized for the distribution, and people get bored and that boredom actually drives much more of the culture than anyone will give that credit to, especially an A.I. developer who can only look backwards.

the idea is, in my mind at least, that those people who curate the internet, who have a point of view, who have a beginning and middle, and an end to the story they’re trying to tell all the time about the culture we’re in or the politics we’re in or whatever. They will actually become the centers of attention and you cannot replace that with A.I. You cannot replace that curatorial function or that guiding function that we’ve always looked to other individuals to do.

I think as the flood of A.I. comes to our distribution networks, the value of having a powerful individual who curates things for people, combined with a powerful institution who protects their integrity actually will go up. I don’t think that’s going to go down.

I think when you're starting a company, it's really useful to ask the question, why now? And this is like, pretty cliche for startup stuff, so if you've heard of it already, apologies, but I do think it's a really useful framework. And that question of why now? Can be societal. Maybe there's some new cultural trend, perhaps it's regulatory. Some law has been passed or appealed. I like the technological version. And for us we saw drones in 2012 and WebGL as few technologies that were happening where because these technologies were happening, new possibilities were suddenly there.

But we're like, why would you do anything in photo editing if you're not on the phone? And so we felt like we were kind of building the wrong place and then eventually sort of shifted our attention to design, which I had been a design internet flipboard and that helped kind of help me realize what would be possible there.

And I would just say don't just go for an idea because it's kind of working. Go for an idea that you really care about because even if it doesn't work, you'll still learn from it and you'll still have one.