Esther Dyson quotes

Change means that what was before wasn't perfect. People want things to be better.
-- Esther Dyson

#Change #Mean #People

Always make new mistakes.
-- Esther Dyson

#Mistake #Mindfulness

The best investor is your customer.
-- Esther Dyson

#Investors

The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It accentuates what you would do anyway. If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone. If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect.
-- Esther Dyson

#Alcohol #Loner #Want

It may not always be profitable at first for businesses to be online, but it is certainly going to be unprofitable not to be online.
-- Esther Dyson

#Technology #May #Firsts

As long as a government can come and shoot you, you can't jump on the Internet to freedom.
-- Esther Dyson

#Government #Long #Internet

Well, take the evolution of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It began as hackers' rights. Then it became general civil liberties of everybody - government stay away.
-- Esther Dyson

#Rights #Government #Liberty

There's almost no way of doing importing honestly, because if you do you're at such a disadvantage competitively. So people spend huge amounts of effort getting around stupid laws and not paying taxes.
-- Esther Dyson

#Stupid #Law #People

Listening to other companies' customers is the best way to gain market share, while listening to the visionaries is the best way to create new markets.
-- Esther Dyson

#Listening #Visionaries #Way

Few influential people involved with the Internet claim that it is a good in and of itself. It is a powerful tool for solving social problems, just as it is a tool for making money, finding lost relatives, receiving medical advice, or, come to that, trading instructions for making bombs.
-- Esther Dyson

#Powerful #People #Advice

No system in the world is so well-designed that it can't grow stale, rigid, or corrupted by those who benefit most from it.
-- Esther Dyson

#Benefits #World #Internet

And the Russians certainly don't have it. If a woman shows up in a fur coat, I just assume she's a crook. And that's me, the nice American. The assumption that you can't make money honestly is a killer.
-- Esther Dyson

#Nice #Eyebrows #Crooks

I am not in favor of immortality. I believe death for humans is the way of getting rid of accumulated errors - as in trial and error. Without death, the old folks would start to gang up on the babies (the new trials). Immortality --> immortal mistakes.
-- Esther Dyson

#Baby #Mistake #Believe

From the business point of view—not to overstate it—intellectual property is dead; long live intellectual process. Long live service; long live performance.
-- Esther Dyson

#Views #Long #Intellectual

The nature of business and government has been to build a surplus and self-perpetuate, but the Internet fosters and rewards smaller, more fluid organizations.
-- Esther Dyson

#Government #Self #Organization

It looks simple to come up with a tablet that works, but it is not, ... In order to have the power and portability you need, you need power. The screen is the part of the device that uses the most power.
-- Esther Dyson

#Simple #Order #Needs

Don't leave hold of your common sense. Think about what you're doing and how the technology can enhance it. Don't think about technology first.
-- Esther Dyson

#Thinking #Technology #Common Sense

Encryption...is a powerful defensive weapon for free people. It offers a technical guarantee of privacy, regardless of who is running the government... It's hard to think of a more powerful, less dangerous tool for liberty.
-- Esther Dyson

#Running #Powerful #Technology

I became a real free market fanatic. I'm probably less so now than even two or three years ago.
-- Esther Dyson

#Real #Years #Two

Having seen a non-market economy, I suddenly understood much better what I liked about a market economy.
-- Esther Dyson

#Economy #Market Economy #Understood

But there is a corollary to freedom and that's personal responsibility, and the real challenge is how you generate that personal responsibility without imposing it.
-- Esther Dyson

#Real #Responsibility #Challenges

I joined the board of the Santa Fe Institute.
-- Esther Dyson

#Boards #Santa

In the space of three weeks, I met a fair bunch of the guys who were just starting those little programmers' co-ops, and everybody was talking about starting businesses.
-- Esther Dyson

#Talking #Space #Guy

I think copyright is moral, proper. I think a creator has the right to control the disposition of his or her works - I actually believe that the financial issue is less important than the integrity of the work, the attribution, that kind of stuff.
-- Esther Dyson

#Integrity #Believe #Thinking

I think I have the right to know what Steve Forbes paid in taxes - I don't think there should be a law. I think there should be a presumption. I wouldn't vote for a guy who wouldn't reveal what he paid in taxes. That kind of thing.
-- Esther Dyson

#Thinking #Law #Guy

I think that the use of copyright is going to change dramatically. Part of it is economics. There is just going to be so much content out there - there's a scarcity of attention. Information consumes attention, and there's too much information.
-- Esther Dyson

#Thinking #Attention #Scarcity

I would much rather see responsibilities exercised by individuals than have them imposed by the government.
-- Esther Dyson

#Responsibility #Government #Individual

I've seen disgusting excess in business, and I've seen disgusting excess in Washington. But at the same time, I've certainly learned that Washington matters and that you can't ignore it, especially when you get into telecom.
-- Esther Dyson

#Excess #Matter #Disgusting

In the sense that people who produce things and work get rewarded, statistically. You don't get rewarded precisely for your effort, but in Russia you got rewarded for being alive, but not very well rewarded.
-- Esther Dyson

#Russia #People #Effort

Oh, that all the things my father had told me about how disgusting Washington is are true. And again it's the system - there are lots of nice, well-meaning people there. But it's a sleazy place. And politics is all about doing favors.
-- Esther Dyson

#Father #Nice #People

Part of the problem is when we bring in a new technology we expect it to be perfect in a way that we don't expect the world that we're familiar with to be perfect.
-- Esther Dyson

#Technology #Perfect #World

Since I became chairman, I've tried to turn EFF into civil liberties and responsibilities.
-- Esther Dyson

#Responsibility #Liberty #Turns