Nathan Myhrvold quotes

Business is war! Its leaders are strategic commanders, who boldly snatch victory from the jaws of defeat - and who perform other acts of derring-do. This kind of talk sounds great in the boardroom, and, for that matter, in the bookstore, where dozens of authors counsel would-be corporate warriors. (Nathan Myhrvold)
Microsoft, Apple, Facebook all bought huge patent portfolios to further their strategic game. They're doing what I'm doing! View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
The physics of water is central to cooking, because food is mostly water. All steak that you cook is actually boiled on the inside. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
Suppose that 'Unsolved Mysteries' called you with news of a long-lost identical twin. Would that suddenly make you less of a person, less of an individual? It is hard to see how. So, why would a clone be different? Your clone would be raised in a different era by different people - like the lost identical twin, only younger than you. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
New online formats gutted the newspaper-ad business. Why pore over tiny print looking for a job in the want ads when you can tap a few keywords into monster.com, then click through and apply? Why pay a steep per-character rate for a classified when you can hawk a whole garage full of used stuff on EBay or Craigslist for free? View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
If your kitchen smells good, your food lost something. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
If I want popularity, I go to a chef's convention. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
When we first did 'Modernist Cuisine,' I think most people in cookbook publishing would have said, 'This is insane.' View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
My company invents all kinds of new technology in lots of different areas. And we do that for a couple of reasons. We invent for fun - invention is a lot of fun to do - and we also invent for profit. The two are related because the profit actually takes long enough that if it isn't fun, you wouldn't have the time to do it. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
If you have a block of ballistics gelatin and a high-speed camera, pretty soon somebody gets a gun! View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
Words can hurt you. In the larger world, it frames how people think about you, and it can hurt you in lots of little, subtle ways. (Nathan Myhrvold)
What you do on a dinosaur expedition is you hike and look at the ground. You find bones sticking out of the dirt and, once you see something, you dig. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
One of the problems with posing a 'bold new plan' is that you can't just extrapolate from previous plans. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
Most estimates of the mortality risk posed by asteroid impacts put it at about the same risk as flying in a commercial airliner. However, you have to remember that this is like the entire human race riding the plane - it is one of the few risks that really could wipe us all out. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
Risk is the sort of word that is easy to discuss upfront but tough to handle when it comes time to pay the piper. There will always be some who wimp out and second-guess when the pain hits, but that is a childish reaction. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
We collectively have a special place in our heart for the manned space flight program - Apollo nostalgia is one element, but that is only part of it. American culture worships explorers - look at the fame of Lewis and Clark, for example. The American people want to think of themselves as supporting exploration. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
The techniques of being an Internet visionary are just like those of lower-tech fortunetellers through the ages. A technological visionary must tell people what they want to hear, because your company's stock won't rise if you spout an unpopular vision to analysts. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
Micropayments are great if you use them for a product or service with certain properties. It must be one where you can get away with usage-based pricing, and where there is a strong rationale for making it cheap, yet not free. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
Software-industry battles are fought by highly paid and out-of-shape nerds furiously pounding computer keyboards while they guzzle diet Coke. The stakes aren't very dramatic. Life? Liberty? The pursuit of happiness? Nope, it's about stock options. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
The reason societies with democratic governments are better places to live in than their alternatives isn't because of some goodness intrinsic to democracy, but because its hopeless inefficiency helps blunt the basic potential for evil. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
We pay for content that we like, and we like the content we pay for. It's a lot more satisfying to pay $7.50 for Steven Spielberg's next epic than it is to watch my home movies for free. Even for me. (Nathan Myhrvold)
By burning nuclear waste as fuel, we believe we can power the United States cleanly for hundreds of years without ever touching new resources. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
The simplest fix for better grilling is to line the inside of your barbecue with tin foil. It dramatically affects how evenly the heat is distributed. That crusty black hibachi or Weber grill is doing your food no favors. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
Ultimately, my Ph.D. is in mathematical physics, focusing on quantum field theory and curved space-time, and I worked with Stephen Hawking. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold
I wanted to figure out how long to cook things. I did some experiments and then wrote a program using Mathematica to model how heat is transferred through food. View quote
Nathan Myhrvold