Nathan Myhrvold

“Cooking is an art, but all art requires knowing something about the techniques and materials. Using modernist techniques, you get more control, and that allows you to be more artistic, not l...”

“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 d...”

“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 whop...”

“Nuclear energy is a baseload - meaning it's power that you can run any time you want, day or night - and carbon-free.”

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

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

“If people don't get paid for their inventions, that's not a good thing. In the case of many patents, there are people who aren't in a position to take them to the next level. If you don't en...”

“Making money from enforcing patents is no more wrong than investing in preferred stock.”

“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.”

“Risk is the sort of word that is easy to discuss upfront but tough to handle when it comes time to pay the piper. There will always be some who wimp out and second-guess when the pain hits,...”

“Micropayments are great if you use them for a product or service with certain properties. It must be one where you can get away with usage-based pricing, and where there is a strong rational...”

“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 reassuran...”

“Within NASA, the shuttle is perhaps the least-groundbreaking project. Recall that Apollo was about creating brand-new technologies that did something unprecedented - putting men on the moon....”

“There's a limit to how much you can deploy renewables, like wind or solar. People will talk about getting up to 30 percent of America's power from renewables, but you can't get to 100 percen...”

“Mankind is not special by virtue of our address in the universe, or what spins around us, or because life originated here. Slowly, but surely, we've been compelled to renounce the comfort of...”

“In politics, religion and other areas of culture, people disagree on the worth of competing ideas. There is no equivalent to the scientific method that can determine in a robust way which id...”

“Age can be wonderful for red wine, but not for spacecraft.”

“Near Marseilles in the south of France, bouillabaisse is a cult food. In Toulouse and Carcassonne, the bean-based stew cassoulet is a cult food. Spain has paella and a number of others. Ital...”

“Politicians don't like to face unpleasant realities. In truth, nobody does, but as individuals, we have no choice; if we neglect to plan ahead, we are held accountable. Fail to meet your res...”

“One of the ugly secrets of the renewable-energy industry is that its products make no economic sense unless they are highly subsidized.”