Andrew Grove

“He combined the analytic approach of a scientist with an ability to engage others in honest and deep conversation, which sustained Intel's success over a period that saw the rise of the personal computer, the internet and Silicon Valley.”

“Andy Grove... escaped the ruins of postwar Europe to become one of the architects of Silicon Valley’s growth into the world’s center of technology creation.”

“The personal computer... went to individuals first before it went to corporations... The corporations are sitting, wishing this whole friggin' thing [Electric cars] to go away. Which is exactly what the computer companies' attitude was to personal computers.”

“The drumbeat of the electrical transportation is accelerating like nothing I've ever seen in my life.”

“And try not to get too depressed in the part of the journey, because there’s a professional responsibility. If you are depressed, you can’t motivate your staff to extraordinary measures. So you have to keep your own spirits up even though you well understand that you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I think it is very important for you to do two things: act on your temporary conviction as if it was a real conviction; and when you realize that you are wrong, correct course very quickly”

“By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazis' "Final Solution," the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint. . . [where] many young people were killed; countless others were interned. Some two hundred thousand Hungarians escaped to the West. I was one of them.”

“All of us in business have a responsibility to maintain the industrial base on which we depend and the society whose adaptability — and stability — we may have taken for granted.”

“Each company, ruggedly individualistic, does its best to expand efficiently and improve its own profitability. However, our pursuit of our individual businesses, which often involves transferring manufacturing and a great deal of engineering out of the country, has hindered our ability to bring innovations to scale at home. Without scaling, we don't just lose jobs—we lose our hold on new technologies. Losing the ability to scale will ultimately damage our capacity to innovate.”

“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.”

“A fundamental rule in technology says that whatever can be done will be done.”

“Technology will always win. You can delay technology by legal interference, but technology will flow around legal barriers.”

“A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin. Methods have to change. Focus has to change. Values have to change. The sum total of those changes is transformation.”

“You have no choice but to operate in a world shaped by globalization and the information revolution. There are two options: adapt or die.”

“You need to try to do the impossible, to anticipate the unexpected. And when the unexpected happens, you should double the efforts to make order from the disorder it creates in your life. The motto I'm advocating is — Let chaos reign, then rein in chaos. Does that mean that you shouldn't plan? Not at all. You need to plan the way a fire department plans. It cannot anticipate fires, so it has to shape a flexible organization that is capable of responding to unpredictable events.”

“Your career is your business, and you are its CEO.”

“In various bits and pieces, we have steered Intel from a start-up to one of the central companies of the information economy.”

“Technology happens, it's not good, it's not bad. Is steel good or bad?”

“Bad companies are destroyed by crisis, Good companies survive them, Great companies are improved by them.”

“When I came to Intel, I was scared to death. I left a very secure job where I knew what I was doing and started running R&D for a brand new venture in untried territory. It was terrifying.”