Siobhan Gorman:

In 2003, Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder of PayPal, pitched an idea to Alexander Karp: Could they build software that would uncover terror networks using the approach PayPal had devised to fight Russian cybercriminals?

Alexander Karp:

"We were very naive. We just thought this was a cool idea."

Mary Beth Long:

"It's a new way of war fighting."

Gorman again:

Karp and his colleagues make frequent trips to Palo Alto to make sure they don't lose "the vibe of the Shire."

Karp, in a recent conversation with Charlie Rose:

You know, terrorism is asymmetric. Asymmetry presupposes software ... and we thought that [the Paypal] approach would be effective in this context and would do two things. It would allow humans to find needles in haystacks, so make the data intelligible to you and me, which it's not, and by doing that, it would allow them to find bad people trying to destroy our society, and could be used also to protect civil liberties by making the data so transparent that it is very clear what the government is doing and how they are doing it, which is a particular passion of our company.

Paul Graham:

In most domains, talent is overrated compared to determination--partly because it makes a better story, partly because it gives onlookers an excuse for being lazy, and partly because after a while determination starts to look like talent.

The more willful you are, the more disciplined you have to be. The stronger your will, the less anyone will be able to argue with you except yourself. And someone has to argue with you ...

Sam Kean:

There's nothing crueler the gods can do to an artist than misalign his talents and passion.

Gary Wills:

The deeper you go into one thing, the more it connects you with other things.