Quotes by Nathan Myhrvold

About Nathan Myhrvold:

Nathan Paul Myhrvold is co-founder of Intellectual Ventures and the principal author of Modernist Cuisine. Myhrvold was listed as co-inventor on 17 patents at Microsoft and has since co-sponsored applications for over 500 other patents for which his corporation is funding the patent monetization effort.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

In the early days of the software industry, people cared about copyright and didn't give a damn about patents - they copied each other willy-nilly.

Nathan Myhrvold

Microsoft, Apple, Facebook all bought huge patent portfolios to further their strategic game. They're doing what I'm doing!

Nathan Myhrvold

No CEO ever says, 'Damnit, we need to increase research!' I want to encourage them to do that.

Nathan Myhrvold

Every serious nuclear accident involves operator error, so you want to eliminate the operator altogether.

Nathan Myhrvold

My career at Microsoft really was getting in the way of my cooking.

Nathan Myhrvold

Sooner or later the space program will need to save us by detecting and deflecting an incoming asteroid.

Nathan Myhrvold

A person's basic humanity is not governed by how he or she came into this world, or whether somebody else happens to have the same DNA.

Nathan Myhrvold

Technological 'revolutions' don't really overthrow anything - they simply append a new and dynamic market to that which went before.

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.

Nathan Myhrvold

I think you would find almost anyone who stands up for their patent rights has been called a patent troll.

Nathan Myhrvold

We should have more invention.

Nathan Myhrvold

Now, to find dinosaurs, you hike around in horrible conditions looking for a dinosaur. It sounds really dumb, but that's what it is. It's horrible conditions, because wherever you have nice weather, plants grow, and you don't get any erosion, and you...

Nathan Myhrvold

When we first did 'Modernist Cuisine,' I think most people in cookbook publishing would have said, 'This is insane.'

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 ...

Nathan Myhrvold

Being a visionary is a new profession, but it is really just a variant on fortunetelling, which may be the world's oldest. And its marketing appeal is similar - people will pay for reassurance about the unknown.

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 visi...

Nathan Myhrvold

Three things about water affect almost all of cooking. First are the hydrogen bonds, which is why it has an incredibly high boiling point. Another is that it's a polar molecule, so that it dissolves a lot of things, and there are things that won't mi...

Nathan Myhrvold

If people don't find what you are doing threatening, then it is probably not very important.

Nathan Myhrvold

Records were replaced by CDs, and lead type died in favor of computerized fonts. However, each had a 100-year ride of popularity, so you can't feel too bad for them.

Nathan Myhrvold

In market research I did at Microsoft Corp. in the early 1990s, I estimated that the 'Wall Street Journal' took in about 75 cents per copy from subscribers, $1.25 at the newsstand and a whopping $5 per copy from ads. The ad revenue let them run a far...

Nathan Myhrvold

If you want to do interesting software, you have to have a bunch of people do it, because the amount of software that one person can do isn't that interesting.

Nathan Myhrvold

Author Bio

  • NameNathan Myhrvold
  • DescriptionChief Technology Officer at Microsoft
  • BornAugust 3, 1959
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionMathematician; Engineer; Photographer; Entrepreneur