Today, computers are almost second nature to most of us.
— James Dyson
We need to encourage investors to invest in high-technology startups.
When you say 'design,' everybody thinks of magazine pages. So it's an emotive word. Everybody thinks it's how something looks, whereas for me, design is pretty much everything.
The Web is fascinating and transformative, but it's an easy, flashy, get-rich-quick option to the hard graft of proper industry.
I don't believe in brands.
I was frustrated as a child when I had to use a vacuum. It had a screaming noise and the smell of stale dog and a lack of performance.
As an engineer I'm constantly spotting problems and plotting how to solve them.
I'm afraid I am tidy, and I have to be because the office is open plan and my glass office door is literally always open.
I think people are realizing that engineering and science are extremely good degrees to get and you'll be very highly paid once you've got them.
So I think the winners in recession are the people who produce new technology that does things better, which people really want.
I've obviously used fans - I wouldn't say all my life, because we couldn't afford them when I was young, but from my 20s and onwards we've had to use fans. And I've always loathed them. Everything about them. The way you adjust them, getting them at the angle you want. Carrying them. Cleaning them. The danger of putting your finger in them.
Everybody recognizes that if you can make very efficient electric motors, you can make a quantum leap forward.
If you didn't have patents, no one would bother to spend money on research and development. But with patents, if someone has a good idea and a competitor can't copy it, then that competitor will have to think of their own way of doing it. So then, instead of just one innovator, you have two or three people trying to do something in a new way.
People will make leaps of faith and get excited by your product if you just get it in front of them.
Enjoy failure and learn from it. You can never learn from success.
Far too few designers put any thought into usability, ending up with a great product that's completely inaccessible.
I imported the first Mac into England in 1984; you know, the beige box. I imported what I think were the first four that came into England. I never opened the instruction manual. That was the best thing about it.
I hate science fiction.
At school, I enjoyed playing the bassoon. I was in the orchestra and played the melody when the other boys sang hymns at prayers time.
If you invent something, you're doing a creative act. It's like writing a novel or composing music. You put your heart and soul into it, and money. It's years of your life, it's your house remortgaged, huge emotional investment and financial investment.
Apartments are getting smaller on a whole. Houses are getting smaller. People don't need great big vacuums anymore.
I grew up running miles of the Norfolk coastline. I'd think nothing of a six-mile run before breakfast. I still run, though not as far and not before muesli.
Companies are not ingenious, it's the people in them that are.
I think if you have to pay for your education, you worry very seriously about you're going to do when you've got your degree.
We should learn to live more with our climate and rely less on electricity to alter our climate.
Now, we don't teach children in schools to be creative. We don't teach them to experiment. We want them to fill in the right answer, tick the right answer in the box.
Cordless vacuums are designed for quick jobs, but you need enough power to do the job; you don't want the power waning over time.
Everyone has ideas. They may be too busy or lack the confidence or technical ability to carry them out. But I want to carry them out. It is a matter of getting up and doing it.
People buy products if they're better.
The wonderful thing about Apple technology is just how intuitive it is.
I don't particularly follow the Bauhaus school of design, where you make everything into a black box - simplify it.
My interest in film is sort of catholic - apart from science fiction and horror movies, I'll watch almost everything.
Goodness, I know nothing about nuclear energy.
The media thinks that you have to make science sexy and concentrate on themes such as rivalry and the human issues.
I'm not into politics but I am committed to a cause: ensuring design technology and engineering stays on the U.K. curriculum, alongside science and maths - grounding abstract theory, merging the practical with the academic.
If robots are to clean our homes, they'll have to do it better than a person.
The British judiciary needs to support intellectual property.
The way the world is going, it's technology driven. And it isn't just driven by the old super powers, it's driven by the far east and new emerging economies.
Well, air-conditioning is not a good thing.
Well, I'm rather attracted to rather prosaic things like vacuum cleaners and hand dryers. Where people haven't apparently made them with a great love for what they're doing.
If you really want to improve technology, if you want things to work better and be better, you've got to protect the person who spends a lot of effort, money, and time developing that new technology.
I like living on the edge.
One of the most fun inventions of my lifetime is the Mini.
