If you're going to fail, you might as well fail at the big ones.
We can't live any more in a world which is based on stuff and not ideas. If you want to live with the world of stuff, we're all doomed.
Americans thinking that America will continue to lead the world in innovation and quality of life without some quick and serious educational improvements are dangerously delusional.
More than ever, the world needs good engineers. However, the pool of talent is shrinking not growing.
Technology is how we create wealth, how we cure diseases, how we'll build an environment that's sustainable and also gives people the capacity to pull more out of this world and still leave it better than when they found it.
I would argue that education, actual learning - it is hard work. It's very personal. Your parents don't teach you anything. Your teachers don't teach you anything. The government doesn't teach you anything. You read it. You don't understand it; you read it again. You break a pencil and read it again.
Clearly, there are many places where diesel is king or gas-turbine is king, or IC engines will win, but there are many places in the world where, as we've seen, they just won't do the job. The modern version of the Stirling engine has some very, very attractive characteristics, and we're trying to optimize it for some of those applications.
I've spent quite a bit of time working on wind turbines and exploring control systems and photovoltaic and integration system.
My plane is a Premiere; it has very efficient gas turbine engines. It goes very fast on relatively little fuel. Flying has been my passion since I was a kid.
Innovation is so hard and so frustrating; it takes the intersections of people with courage, vision, and resources.
My father spent his entire early career as an illustrator for comic books: EC Comics like 'Tales from the Crypt' and 'Creepshow,' then moving on to such magazines as 'Mad' and 'Weird Science.'
Nobody expects that just because they've made computers better they're going to give them to you free.
Our healthcare system has seen some of the greatest achievements of the human intellect since we started recording history: We're developing incredible devices and implantables to improve the quantity and quality of people's lives.
Get used to dealing with failure as long as it doesn't hurt people around you, as long as it doesn't hurt you physically, or it doesn't hurt you so much that you can't pick yourself up.
If people ridicule you, look them in the eye and say, 'Yeah, I may have failed, but at least I tried,' and get on with it.
We all know about certain problems we wish we didn't have.
