Ramez Naam Quotes

The imagination is man's power over nature.

Ideas are a capital that bears interest only in the hands of talent.

Each additional idea is a gift to the future. Each additional idea producer is a source of wealth for future generations.

I often think about the many remarkable things that my personal computer can do which I never ask it to do. I probably use a small fraction of its capabilities. I often wonder if the same dynamic occurs with our capacity for creativity.

Thought, not money, is the real business capital.

This is a universal human dream - that brains, not brawn, will rule - and the fact that America has the world's finest institutions of higher education may be our greatest single national asset.

I enjoy creating new ideas, working on new creative projects.

We need to make a greater investment in human intelligence.

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.

Creativity requires input, and that's what research is. You're gathering material with which to build.

We can invent only with memory.

In Israel, a land lacking in natural resources, we learned to appreciate our greatest national advantage: our minds. Through creativity and innovation, we transformed barren deserts into flourishing fields and pioneered new frontiers in science and technology.

Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.

Openness explains the ability to innovate and come up with big ideas because you're open to them, and fluid intelligence explains the ability to go and execute.

Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.

All riches have their origin in mind. Wealth is in ideas - not money.

The great thing about ideas is that every new idea leads to two more new ones. It’s the opposite of a gold rush, where the more people who show up in 1849 to get that gold in California, the faster the gold runs out. Ideas are not like that; ideas breed.

Think of the imagination as a giant stone from which we carve out new ideas. As we chip away, our new ideas become more polished and refined. But if you start by editing your imagination, you start with a tiny stone.

We are all innovators, we all like to use our imagination, which is our greatest tool.

I like to come up with new ideas and see them grow.

In innovation, you're trying to create something from nothing.

You have to draw on a fair amount of experience in order to be able to put ideas together.

You can't invent something you have no epistemological access to. In a way, it's all recombination.

I think it's better to have ideas.

Brainpower is by far our scarcest resource.