David Pogue Quotes

Most robotic heads have 20 motors. Mine have 32.

If I could do anything, I'd be an engineer of some sort. I used to build robots.

Building a robot that has legs and walks around is a very expensive proposition. Mother Nature has created many wonderful things, but one thing we do have that nature doesn't is the wheel, a continuous rotating joint, and tracks, so we need to make use of inventions to make things simpler.

Per capita, I would say that Australia has more biomimetic projects going than many other countries I've been to.

In particular, I studied German and Russian biomechanics.

My explorations of the technical world started with Legos, with which I was quite creative in constructing moving objects with the basic building blocks that were then available.

The East Germans first used biomechanics. This meant that rather than guessing about technique and form, they could apply changes to athletic performance based on science.

I had been impressed by the fact that biological systems were based on molecular machines and that we were learning to design and build these sorts of things.

I'm fearless when it comes to engineering and motors and gears and pulleys and glass and artwork.

We've managed to motion-track the silkworm's movement as it is building its cocoon. Our aim was to translate the motion-capture data into a 3D printer connected to a robotic arm in order to study the biological structure in larger scales.

In nature, there is no separation between design, engineering, and fabrication; the bone does it all.

If the elbow had been placed closer to the hand, the forearm would have been too short to bring the glass to the mouth; and if it had been closer to the shoulder, the forearm would have been so long that it would have carried the glass beyond the mouth.

Isaac Asimov is, in reality, based on something I had invented a few years previously.

The walking of Man is falling forwards.

Inventive man has invented nothing -- nothing from scratch. If he has produced a machine that in motion overcomes the law of gravity, he learned the essentials from the observation of birds.

It strikes me that the only reason to take apart a pocket watch, or a car engine, aside from the simple delight of disassembly, is to find out how it works. To understand it, so you can put it back together again better than before, or build a new one that goes beyond what the old one could do. We've been taking apart the superhero for ten years or more; it's time to put it back together and wind it up, time to take it out on the road and floor it, see what it'll do.

One of the reasons I'm so proud of my mother is she took her skills of over a 40 years photographic career and translated that to a film.

I didn't really get that good at cutting because I didn't have those three years of gestating and nurturing my skills in the bedroom. I was kind of, like, out and playing in clubs after three of four months, because I was pushy with promoters. But I would just listen to the radio - Stretch Armstrong and Red Alert - and then I would go hang out with Mayhem, who did the WNYU hip-hop show.

In fact, my main conclusion after spending ten years of my life working on the TEX project is that software is hard. It's harder than anything else I've ever had to do.

[Industrial design in 50 years] will be less about looks and more about personality of artifacts.

The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.

My background are acting, film production, directing, and I studied them for many years. Keep in mind that you need many other skills when you are starting any film project related to real life.

I am the person I want to be. I got to teach and had some of the greatest times in my life learning that I had some teaching skills and doing some incredible things teaching 200 hours of computers a year to fifth graders, making them experts at certain things.

There is a strange fact about the human mind, a fact that differentiates the mind sharply from the body. The body is limited in ways that the mind is not. One sign of this is that the body does not continue indefinitely to grow in strength and develop in skill and grace. By the time most people are thirty years old, their bodies are as good as they will ever be; in fact, many persons' bodies have begun to deteriorate by that time. But there is no limit to the amount of growth and development that the mind can sustain. The mind does not stop growing at any particular age.

Our little Spaceship Earth is only eight thousand miles in diameter, which is almost a negligible dimension in the great vastness of space.... Spaceship Earth was so extraordinarily well invented and designed that to our knowledge humans have been on board it for two million years not even knowing that they were on board a ship.