Ray Kurzweil Quotes

Supercomputers will achieve one human brain capacity by 2010, and personal computers will do so by about 2020.

Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it.

Find your passion, learn how to add value to it, and commit to a lifetime of learning.

When you talk to a human in 2035, you'll be talking to someone that's a combination of biological and non-biological intelligence.

Mobile phones are misnamed. They should be called gateways to human knowledge.

The past is over; the present is fleeting; we live in the future.

Launching a breakthrough idea is like shooting skeet. People's needs change, so you must aim well ahead of the target to hit it.

The profound aspect of technology is that once secrets are revealed, the magic doesn't disappear.

Does God exist? Well, I would say, 'not yet'.

A successful person isn't necessarily better than her less successful peers at solving problems; her pattern-recognition facilities have just learned what problems are worth solving.

There are downsides to every technology. Fire kept us warm, but also burned down our villages.

Information defines your personality, your memories, your skills.

Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it.

By 2009, computers will disappear. Displays will be written directly onto our retinas by devices in our eyeglasses and contact lenses.

Our technology, our machines, is part of our humanity. We created them to extend ourselves, and that is what is unique about human beings.

What we spend our time on is probably the most important decision we make.

Nature, and the natural human condition, generates tremendous suffering. We have the means to overcome that, and we should deploy it.

Death is a great tragedy…a profound loss…I don’t accept it…I think people are kidding themselves when they say they are comfortable with death.

In 1999, I said that in about a decade we would see technologies such as self-driving cars and mobile phones that could answer your questions, and people criticized these predictions as unrealistic.

Biological evolution is too slow for the human species. Over the next few decades, it's going to be left in the dust.

If we could convert 0.03 percent of the sunlight that falls on the earth into energy, we could meet all of our projected needs for 2030.

Play is just another version of work

The story of evolution unfolds with increasing levels of abstraction.

We appear to be programmed with the idea that there are 'things' outside of our self, and some are conscious, and some are not.

The ethical debates are like stones in a stream. The water runs around them. You haven't seen any biological technologies held up for one week by any of these debates.

People talk philosophically, Oh, I don't want to live past 100.' You know, I'd like to hear them say that when they're 99.

Machines will follow a path that mirrors the evolution of humans. Ultimately, however, self-aware, self-improving machines will evolve beyond humans' ability to control or even understand them.

Doing real world projects is, I think, the best way to learn and also to engage the world and find out what the world is all about.

We'll be able to have very intelligent, little robots with computers going inside our bloodstream, keeping us healthy from inside, destroying cancer at the level of one cell.

We're democratizing the tools of creativity.

Intuition is linear; our imaginations are weak. Even the brightest of us only extrapolate from what we know now; for the most part, we're afraid to really stretch.

A lot of movies about artificial intelligence envision that AIs will be very intelligent but missing some key emotional qualities of humans and therefore turn out to be very dangerous.

By the 2030s, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will predominate.

The purposeful destruction of information is the essence of intelligent work.

All of our schools need to bring 'learn from doing' into the mainstream education, not just afternoon.

The telephone is virtual reality in that you can meet with someone as if you are together, at least for the auditory sense.

Science fiction is the great opportunity to speculate on what could happen. It does give me, as a futurist, scenarios.

By 2029, computers will have emotional intelligence and be convincing as people.

I'm working on artificial intelligence. Actually, natural language understanding, which is to get computers to understand the meaning of documents.

I consider myself an inventor, entrepreneur, and author.

It is doubling now every two years. Doubling every two years means multiplying by 1,000 in 20 years. At that rate we'll meet 100 percent of our energy needs in 20 years.

My mission at Google is to develop natural language understanding with a team and in collaboration with other researchers at Google.

I do have to pick my priorities. Nobody can do everything.

The key issue as to whether or not a non-biological entity deserves rights really comes down to whether or not it's conscious.... Does it have feelings?

So what used to fit in a building now fits in your pocket, what fits in your pocket now will fit inside a blood cell in 25 years.

The need to congregate workers in offices will gradually diminish.

I'm an inventor. I became interested in long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.

Humans feel deeply the suffering of their friends and allies and easily discount/dismiss the comparable experience of their enemies.

We only have to capture 1/10,000th of the solar energy landing on earth to completely satisfy all our energy needs.

[In] 2029, I think, computers will match and exceed human intelligence in the ways we're now superior, like being funny, where we still have an edge.