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Walter Isaacson Biography Quotes 34 Report mistakes

34 Quotes
Occup.Writer
FromUSA
BornMay 20, 1952
New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Age73 years
Early Life and Education
Walter Isaacson was born on May 20, 1952, in New Orleans, Louisiana, and grew up amid the citys rich cultural traditions that shaped his curiosity about ideas, science, and public life. He attended Isidore Newman School in New Orleans and studied history at Harvard University. After graduating, he continued his education as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, an experience that broadened his perspective on politics, philosophy, and global affairs and set the stage for a career spanning journalism, leadership, and biography.

Entering Journalism
Isaacson began his journalism career at Time, joining the magazine in the late 1970s. He quickly became known for clear, narrative reporting and a gift for explaining complex subjects. Over the next two decades he served as a correspondent and editor, eventually becoming managing editor. In that role, he guided coverage of national politics, world events, science, and technology, and he worked closely with colleagues across the Time newsroom to adapt the organization to a rapidly changing media landscape.

Leadership at CNN
In 2001, Isaacson became chairman and CEO of CNN. He led the network during a tumultuous period that included the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and the early years of the war on terror, when demand for reliable breaking news was intense. He focused on strengthening reporting resources and standards while navigating shifts in cable news competition and digital distribution. After two years, he left to pursue a broader role in ideas and public policy.

The Aspen Institute and Public Service
In 2003, Isaacson became president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, the nonpartisan forum dedicated to leadership, dialogue, and ideas. He expanded its programs that convene thinkers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers to grapple with issues at the intersection of technology, society, and democracy. His stewardship brought together figures from across the spectrum for civil debate and collaborative problem-solving.

A New Orleanian deeply connected to his home state, he also played a public role after Hurricane Katrina. He served as vice-chair of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, working alongside civic leaders such as Norman Francis to coordinate long-term rebuilding. In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed him to chair the Broadcasting Board of Governors, overseeing U.S. international media during a phase of digital transformation and global information challenges.

Historian of Creativity and Innovation
Parallel to his leadership roles, Isaacson established himself as one of the foremost biographers of transformative figures. He first drew wide notice in 1986 with The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made, co-authored with Evan Thomas, a portrait of postwar American statecraft through Dean Acheson, George Kennan, Averell Harriman, Robert Lovett, John McCloy, and Charles Bohlen. He followed with Kissinger: A Biography (1992), a detailed account of Henry Kissingers rise, diplomacy, and controversies.

Isaacsons Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003) portrayed Franklin as a quintessential American pragmatist and polymath, bridging science, politics, and commerce. Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007) illuminated Albert Einsteins scientific genius and human complexity, drawing on newly released documents. With American Sketches (2009), he offered essays on creativity and public life.

His Steve Jobs (2011) became a global bestseller. Jobs gave Isaacson extraordinary access and encouraged colleagues and family members, including Laurene Powell Jobs, Tim Cook, and Jony Ive, to speak candidly. The book captured the volatile mix of vision, exacting standards, and personal intensity that shaped Apple. The Innovators (2014) widened the lens to a networked history of the digital revolution, profiling figures such as Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Wozniak, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin, and stressing the collaborative nature of progress.

In Leonardo da Vinci (2017), Isaacson explored how curiosity, careful observation, and interdisciplinary thinking drove Leonardo to breakthroughs in art and science. The Code Breaker (2021) centered on Jennifer Doudna and the CRISPR revolution, tracing her collaborations and rivalries with scientists including Emmanuelle Charpentier, and examining bioethics as gene editing moved from labs to clinics. With Elon Musk (2023), he embedded with the entrepreneur for two years to observe decision-making at Tesla, SpaceX, and related ventures, chronicling high-risk engineering, volatile management, and ambitious goals for energy and space.

Method and Themes
Isaacsons biographies are grounded in archival research and extensive interviews. He often uses the lives of innovators to show how breakthroughs emerge from the interplay of imagination and disciplined experiment. Across subjects as varied as Franklin, Einstein, Leonardo, and Jobs, he emphasizes a common thread: creativity flourishes where art and science meet, and where teams build on one anothers ideas. He also examines leadership temperament, depicting both the strengths and costs of obsessive drive, and he treats ethical dilemmas in technology with the same seriousness he gives to statecraft and business strategy.

Teaching and Later Career
After more than a decade at Aspen, Isaacson transitioned from its presidency while remaining involved in its mission. He joined the faculty of Tulane University in New Orleans, teaching history and public policy and mentoring students interested in journalism, technology, and civic leadership. Returning to his home city allowed him to continue contributing to its cultural and educational life while researching and writing books that engage global audiences.

Influence and Legacy
Isaacsons work has shaped how millions understand figures who altered science, technology, and society. By situating individuals within the communities that enable discovery, he has highlighted collaborators and confidants as much as singular geniuses. The candid interviews that anchor Steve Jobs, the lab notebooks threaded through Leonardo da Vinci, the scientific disputes of The Code Breaker, and the boardroom and factory-floor scenes in Elon Musk all reflect a biographers commitment to rigorous reporting and fair-minded storytelling. Through roles at Time, CNN, the Aspen Institute, and Tulane, and through portraits of leaders from Henry Kissinger and Benjamin Franklin to Jennifer Doudna and Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson has become a central interpreter of how ideas move the world and how the people behind them wrestle with ambition, ethics, and the responsibilities of power.

Our collection contains 34 quotes who is written by Walter, under the main topics: Ethics & Morality - Wisdom - Justice - Leadership - Writing.
Walter Isaacson Famous Works

34 Famous quotes by Walter Isaacson

"I think when money starts to corrupt journalism, it undermines the journalism, and it undermines the credibility of the product, and you end up not succeeding"
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"I think that's exactly what Silicon Valley was all about in those days. Let's do a startup in our parents' garage and try to create a business"
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"Smart people are a dime a dozen. What matters is the ability to think different... to think out of the box"
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"I think one problem we've had is that people who are smart and creative and innovative as engineers went into financial engineering"
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"I wonder now how tough you have to be to get big things done"
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"I think it's very important to have a sense of balance in covering the war, but you don't have to be morally neutral about terrorism"
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"I do think it's important, if you're going to be very creative, to be a seeker"
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"Polite and velvety leaders, who take care to avoid bruising others, are generally not as effective at forcing change"
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"Just being the seeker, somebody whose open to spiritual enlightenment, is in itself the important thing and it's the reward for being a seeker in this world"
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"I've asked Jobs why he didn't get an operation then and he said, 'I didn't want my body to be opened. I didn't want to be violated in that way.'"
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"I've always had an abundance of material about the subjects of my biographies"
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"I think it is valuable and should be valued by its consumers. Charging for content forces discipline on journalists: they must produce things that people actually value"
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"I have a strong emotional respect for Steve"
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"I actually think Bill Gates is conventionally smarter, even though it's a dumb word, but mental processing power - I've watched him use four different screens, process information, get to the right answer, boom boom boom"
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"We are in a situation with the huge stimulus package that's going to be spent all across this nation and a big financial crisis and banking crisis. And what we need is good, trained journalists who can play the role of watchdog"
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"One of the great pressures we're facing in journalism now is it's a lot cheaper to hire thumb suckers and pundits and have talk shows on the air than actually have bureaus and reporters"
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"I think that we shouldn't be fixated all the time on the ups and downs of the weekly ratings, of the quarter-hour ratings"
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"But the point is to get a whole new generation of people and people in general more re-engaged in news, and this has happened a lot since September 11th of course"
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"And if you don't have your ears open, you're not going to be able to figure out what you should be doing"
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"I don't think there was enough skepticism because I think most of us kind of believed that Saddam Hussein was building biological, chemical, and perhaps even, nuclear weapons"
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"He said, 'From then on, I realized that I was not just abandoned. I was chosen. I was special.' And I think that's the key to understanding Steve Jobs"
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"Yeah, I think that his great creation was not any one product but a company in which creativity was connected to great engineering. And that will survive at least while the current people who trained under Steve are there"
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"When there are multiple versions of a story, you really have three ways to go. You can pick the most sensational version. You can try to balance things in your gut to get to what you think is the honest truth. Or you can err on the side of kindness"
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"Jobs has within him sort of this conflict, but he doesn't quite see it as a conflict between being hippie-ish and anti-materialistic but wanting to sell things like Wozniak's board. Wanting to create a business"
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"In the age of the internet when everybody's a pundit, we're still gonna need somebody there to go talk to the colonels, to be on the ground in Baghdad and stuff and that's very expensive"
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"More generally, I made an effort to leave out things that weren't relevant to the main narrative themes of the book, namely that there were two sides to Steve Jobs: the romantic, poetic, countercultural rebel on one side, and the serious businessperson on the other"
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"I visited Jobs for the last time in his Palo Alto, Calif., home. He had moved to a downstairs bedroom because he was too weak to go up and down stairs. He was curled up in some pain, but his mind was still sharp and his humor vibrant"
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"I think that Benjamin Franklin felt very strongly in foreign policy in this world, that you needed to at least show some humility, especially when you were strong"
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"I think it's really good that you have great competition among news networks, and for that matter all the networks in general. It's bringing more and more people in to watching the news"
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"For some people, miracles serve as evidence of God's existence"
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"I think when you're looking for people to interview, you want to make it fair and honest. You're not just bringing people on so you can beat them up or, you know, make fools out of them or something"
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"I think right now we need to look back at the founding values of our country. Rise above partisanship, be less bitter when it comes to important matters that have to be solved"
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"Especially right after 9/11. Especially when the war in Afghanistan is going on. There was a real sense that you don't get that critical of a government that's leading us in war time"
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"We have to compete in a universe of 200 networks, so we have to carve out our own niche, and to me, that niche is just basic shoe-leather journalism with some good journalists at the helm you can trust as presenters"
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