Cory Doctorow:

I am enough of a techno-pessimist to believe that baking surveillance, control and censorship into the very fabric of our networks, devices and laws is the absolute road to dictatorial hell.

An unnamed intelligence official:

Every day, every week that goes by, there's just one more week of information that we're not collecting. You sit there and say, 'This is unbelievable that we have this gap.'

Markus Dohle:

If you want to make the right decision for the future, fear is not a very good consultant.

Paul Graham:

Just fix things that seem broken.

Ken Auletta:

At the Yerba Buena Center, it took a while for Jobs to mention books, and when he did he said that "Amazon has done a great job" with its Kindle. "We're going to stand on their shoulders and go a little bit farther." It would probably have been more accurate to say that Jobs planned to stand on Amazon's neck and press down hard, with publishers applauding.

Madeline McIntosh, on the publishing business:

It's a culture of lunches. Amazon doesn't play in that culture.

Alain de Botton, author of A Week at the Airport:

There is no one, however lonely or isolated, however pessimistic about the human race, however preoccupied with the payroll, who does not in the end expect that someone significant will come to say hello at arrivals. So what dignity must we possess not to show any hesitation when it becomes clear, in the course of a twelve-second scan of the line, that we are indeed alone, with nowhere to head to other than a long queue at the ticket machine for the Heathrow Express.

Whatever the benefits of prolific and convenient air travel, we may curse it for its smooth subversion of our attempts to use journeys to make lasting changes in our lives.

In a world without airplanes, everything would, of course, go very slowly. And yet there would be benefits tied up in this languor.

Virginie Tisseau:

I ride the tram because every day it takes me to a place less familiar.

David Gelernter:

Instead of letting the Internet solve the easy problems, it's time we got it to solve the important ones.

Louis CK:

Maybe we need some time ... because everything is amazing right now, and nobody's happy ...