You do not have to incriminate yourself. But once you assert your innocence, and once you say you didn't do anything wrong, you can't then use the Fifth Amendment to say, 'I'm not answering questions.'
I've been on both sides; I've interviewed people, and I do an okay job, I guess. But it's awful. Because you feel like you have to defend your life, which is such an interesting concept. It's not an easy process to sit down and talk about, 'What's your motivation?' Because as I'm answering, I'm working it out for myself at the same time.
I don't mind doing interviews. I don't mind answering thoughtful questions. But I'm not thrilled about answering questions like, 'If you were being mugged, and you had a lightsaber in one pocket and a whip in the other, which would you use?'
There is a great deal of busywork to a writer's life, as to a professor's life, a great deal of work that matters only in that, if you don't do it, your desk becomes very full of papers. So, there is a lot of letter answering and a certain amount of speaking, though I try to keep that at a minimum.
I don't like a girl on social media, when you have an open inbox, answering questions from dudes left and right every day. What's the point? It's like having your number all out. Everybody think they're famous when they get 100,000 followers on Instagram and 5,000 on Twitter.
On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
In times of uncertainty, employees crave clarity. As a leader, you won't always have all of the answers - no one expects you to - so you must be open to listening and learning from others. Once you understand a particular challenge and outline the options, you have to be confident in making bold and optimistic decisions.
Throughout my years in business, I discovered something. I would always ask why you do things. The answers that I would invariably get are: 'Oh, that's just the way things are done around here.' Nobody knows why they do what they do. Nobody thinks very deeply about things in business.
Being at ease with not knowing is crucial for answers to come to you.
You need to make a commitment, and once you make it, then life will give you some answers.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.
I think the 'Terminator' idea is a reasonable one - that is that one day the Internet becomes self-aware and simply says that humans are in the way. After all, if you meet an ant hill and you're making a 10-lane super highway, you just pave over the ants. It's not that you don't like the ants, it's not that you hate ants; they are just in the way.
You feel like an ant contemplating Chicago.
I love them very much. All animals big and small. You can name an ant for instance.
Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
I've always gravitated towards those ultimate lines in songs, the line you grab on to. That line in 'Smells Like Teen Spirit,' 'Here we are now/Entertain us' - the irony, the antagonism; that's always stuck with me.
You cease to move into yourself, away from others. You give up your antagonism. You begin to move toward others in love. God moved toward you in gracious, outgoing love, and you move toward others in that same outgoing love.
It is impossible to fuse totally with a culture for which you feel a measure of antagonism.
All you now do is pursue your private objectives within society. Instead of us being a community, everybody is asked to seek their own personal ends. It's called competition. And competition is antagonism.
