Robert Cringely Quotes

#1. My world had turned upside down again and again, which should mean it's right side up now, but it isn't. Everything's different, everything's the same.

Jael McHenry

#2. The rich don't exploit the poor. They just out-compete them.

David Brooks

#3. If you ask someone whether our Constitutional rights are being flushed down the porcelain oubliette, and their response is, "If I answer that honestly they'll arrest me," then you already have your answer.

Robert X. Cringely

#4. Apple and Google will compete like crazy for our data because once they have it we'll be their customers forever.

Robert X. Cringely

#5. There is a fantasy in Redmond that Microsoft products are innovative, but this is based entirely on a peculiar confusion of the words "innovative" and "successful." Microsoft products are successful - they make a lot of money - but that doesn't make them innovative, or even particularly good.

Robert X. Cringely

#6. You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds Except the one in which you belong.

David Whyte

#7. Most Americans want their government to be smaller, not larger; they want their taxes to be lower, not higher.

John Barrasso

#8. The simple rule about weapons is that if thery can be built, they will be built.

Robert X. Cringely

#9. People are sheepish when they approach me.

Ryan Phillippe

#10. In accord with the reigning single standard, the major terrorist atrocities - or worse, aggression - are excluded from the canon of international terrorism.

Noam Chomsky

#11. If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a Rolls Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year killing everyone inside.

Robert Cringely

#12. Where folks like Google have fallen down is in just putting a little review box up, then closing their eyes and letting the algorithm take care of itself. Yelp is a technology company, but also a company that understands how people want to connect with one another.

Jeremy Stoppelman

#13. Hewlett Packard at one point had only three private offices. One belonged to Hewlett, one to Packard, and the third to a guy named Paul Ely who annoyed so many coworkers with his bellowing on the phone that the company finally extended his cubicle walls to the ceiling.

Robert X. Cringely

#14. There was an emotion in the air that encompassed all of us, made us feel we'd shed our old skins and the past was irrelevant.

Robert F. Worth

#15. The companies that can afford to do basic research (and can't afford not to) are ones that dominate their markets ... It's cheap insurance, since failing to do basic research guarantees that the next major advance will be oened by someone else.

Robert X. Cringely

#16. More proof that trusting the Feds to protect our information is like hiring Homer Simpson to guard the donuts.

Robert X. Cringely

#17. I'm very lucky to be able to work in print and radio. I'm very lucky to be able to work at a time when finance and economics are really important. And the number of people who tell finance and economic stories in a kind of accessible storytelling way, there's much more demand than there is supply.

David Plotz

#18. In 1979, for example, Microsoft gave Boeing Commercial Airplane Co. the right to buy any Microsoft product for $50 per copy, until the end of time. Today most Microsoft applications sell in the $300 to $500 range, ten years from now they may cost thousands each.

Robert X. Cringely

#19. I would hate to see the idea of freedom disappear, and I wonder if maybe it will.

Ian Frazier

#20. For real, some of my favorite music is Mexican. It's something about the bassline and the drumming. I can't even speak Spanish, but that's probably why I like it so much.

Yelawolf

#21. For every hour of brains, you will be charged three hours. The other two hours go to management and project management, which is to say they are wasted.

Robert X. Cringely

#22. What you have to watch out for are the theories that claim to be infallible. Because the only way their believers can win is to stomp out everyone who disagrees with them.

Robert X. Cringely