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Jeff Bezos
Founder and CEO, Amazon.com
Jeff Bezos: I was very, very lucky because in fourth grade -- which for me would have been around 1974 -- I had access to a mainframe computer. There were no personal computers in 1974, and there was a company in Houston that had loaned excess mainframe computer time to this little elementary school. And we had a teletype that was connected by an old acoustic modem. You literally dialed a regular phone and picked up the handset and put it in this little cradle. And nobody -- none of the teachers knew how to operate this computer, nobody did. But, there was a stack of manuals and me and a couple of other kids stayed after class and learned how to program this thing, and that worked well for maybe about a week. And then, we learned that the mainframe programmers in some central location somewhere in Houston had already programmed this computer to play Star Trek. And, from that day forward all we did was play Star Trek.
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Jeff Bezos
Founder and CEO, Amazon.com
Jeff Bezos: I don't know. I think it's always hard to know why you're drawn to a particular thing. I think part of it is if you have a facility with that thing, of course it's satisfying to do it and so in a way that's self-reinforcing. And, certainly I always had a facility with computers. I always got along well with them and they're such extraordinary tools. You can teach them to do things and then they actually do them. It's kind of an incredible tool that we've built here in the 20th Century. That was a love affair that really did start in the fourth grade, and by the time I got to high school -- I think when I was in 11th grade I got an Apple II Plus -- and continued fooling around with computers, and then by the time I got to Princeton I was taking all the computer classes, and actually not just learning how to hack, but learning about algorithms and some of the mathematics behind computer science, and it's fascinating. It's really a very involving and fun subject.
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Jeff Bezos
Founder and CEO, Amazon.com
Jeff Bezos: I think one thing I find very motivating -- and I think this is probably a very common form of motivation or cause of motivation is, I love people counting on me, and so, you know, today it's so easy to be motivated, because we have millions of customers counting on us at Amazon.com. We've got thousands of investors counting on us. And, we're a team of thousands of employees all counting on each other. That's fun.
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Benazir Bhutto
Former Prime Minister of Pakistan
Benazir Bhutto: I was a good student. My father put a great emphasis on education, and I found that he would always be so pleased when I did well. But it was terrible for my siblings because they were always being compared by the teachers to me and they would revolt against it, because I'd have a neat handwriting. It's awful now, but right then it was neat, and I'd get my work done and finish everything. I was very studious. I was very, very studious. I had a love for learning. The others didn't like to sit down and do their homework, but I loved doing it.
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Benazir Bhutto
Former Prime Minister of Pakistan
Benazir Bhutto: For me idealism has been the motivation. I think power for itself is useless. If it was just power, how could one -- politics is an obsession. You cannot just be in politics -- or if you really want something -- it is not an eight to five job. It's an around the clock job. So if it was just power I think it would be very empty. I think idealism is very important. The need to change, to bring about change. I feel that life is like -- or society is like -- a canvas, and that if we get office you are given an opportunity to paint it. And it is up to you whether you make a good picture or whether you make a bad picture. I think it is very, very important to have ideals, because when one has ideals one thinks the suffering is worth it. And for me the suffering has been worth it because I think I could change things, and I am still idealistic and I am still optimistic. And people tell me, "Why are you still idealistic and optimistic?" And I say, "Because there could be ten people who are bad, but there are 90 people who are good."
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Keith Black
Pioneering Neurosurgeon
In medical school, you're required to memorize a body of facts. You go to gross anatomy, and you learn what muscles attach where and what goes where. You memorize it. When you go into the research lab you're creating new knowledge, and it was play for me. It was like doing art, or writing poetry, or painting on a canvas. So it wasn't work. When I was in the research lab from 2:00 to 4:00 o'clock in the morning, it wasn't work for me. It was play. It's what I enjoyed doing. Now for someone that didn't like research it would be really hard work, but for someone who enjoyed it, it was fun.
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Keith Black
Pioneering Neurosurgeon
As early as I can remember, I always had a sense of fascination with biology -- anything related to biology. Even though it's not politically correct to say now, when I was eight years old one of the things I would enjoy doing was to go out with my BB gun with my friends and shoot birds to get them back to the house to operate on them. To save them, to get the BB out, you know, to do the surgery to remove the BB. And, you know, dissected frogs. My father actually saw me dissect a frog heart, and observed my sense of curiosity with science, and then went out and got me a chicken heart and I dissected that. And then he went to the slaughterhouse and got me a larger cow heart -- which was really incredible, because here is this big, huge heart with all these different chambers -- and allowed me to dissect that. It really instilled a sense of curiosity in me, but my love was always science and always biology, and I had a sense of fascination with that.
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Keith Black
Pioneering Neurosurgeon
I think one of the true gifts that one can have is to find out what it is that they truly love to do. For some people it's playing the piano. For others it might be swimming, or some sort of athletic event. To me it was science, and I happened to get lucky enough to find my love for science, which I still love. What that allows me to do essentially is -- as a scientist and as a neurosurgeon -- I don't work when I go to work. I mean it's what I love to do. If I didn't get paid for what I wanted to do, I would want to pay to do it. So one is very blessed to find what it is that they love to do. The other thing that it does, it allows you to really devote the focus, the hours, the intensity into whatever it is, to become very good at it. Whatever you do, you're going to have to spend a lot of time perfecting your craft, perfecting your art. So if I'm up late working on a research project, or working to save a patient's life, it's not work for me. It's what I enjoy doing, and it's not difficult to do if you're having fun.
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