"The possible is constantly being redefined, and I care deeply about helping humanity move forward"
About this Quote
“The possible is constantly being redefined” is venture-capital optimism with a quietly imperial edge: it treats reality not as a set of limits but as a moving target that ambitious people get to relocate. Coming from Paul Allen, the line reads less like abstract inspiration and more like a mission statement forged in the specific culture of late-20th-century tech, where software didn’t just solve problems; it redrew the map of work, communication, and power. The phrasing is deliberately frictionless. “Redefined” skips over who gets displaced when “progress” arrives, and who pays the costs while someone else collects the upside.
The second clause, “I care deeply about helping humanity move forward,” supplies the moral alibi that Silicon Valley leaders often staple to transformative ambition. It’s also a telling choice of scale. “Humanity” is so vast it blurs accountability; you can’t fact-check it the way you can a promise about wages, privacy, or monopolies. The emotional claim (“care deeply”) personalizes what is ultimately an institutional project: building systems that reorganize society and then describing that reorganization as benevolence.
Context matters. Allen wasn’t just Microsoft’s co-founder; he became a patron of science, global health, conservation, and big cultural infrastructure. The quote compresses that trajectory into a single logic: wealth generated by redefining the possible can be legitimized by funding the future. It works because it flatters both the speaker and the era, presenting technological disruption as historical necessity and philanthropy as proof of conscience, while leaving the messier politics of “moving forward” politely offstage.
The second clause, “I care deeply about helping humanity move forward,” supplies the moral alibi that Silicon Valley leaders often staple to transformative ambition. It’s also a telling choice of scale. “Humanity” is so vast it blurs accountability; you can’t fact-check it the way you can a promise about wages, privacy, or monopolies. The emotional claim (“care deeply”) personalizes what is ultimately an institutional project: building systems that reorganize society and then describing that reorganization as benevolence.
Context matters. Allen wasn’t just Microsoft’s co-founder; he became a patron of science, global health, conservation, and big cultural infrastructure. The quote compresses that trajectory into a single logic: wealth generated by redefining the possible can be legitimized by funding the future. It works because it flatters both the speaker and the era, presenting technological disruption as historical necessity and philanthropy as proof of conscience, while leaving the messier politics of “moving forward” politely offstage.
Quote Details
| Topic | Vision & Strategy |
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