張忠謀

"People busy doing things rarely have time to think about the past, but in the quiet of the night, when I occasionally look back, what I miss most is not the period after thirty-three, when my career began to achieve some success, but rather the first half of my life."

"Life’s turning points can sometimes be so unpredictable! A short phone call, plus a young man’s momentary impulse, ended up binding me to semiconductors for a lifetime!"

"Only true modern people know that they are products of tradition and yet disloyal subjects of tradition; they know well the deficiencies of tradition and think day and night of using marginal creation to make up for them, but in their hearts they also understand that today’s creation will soon be surpassed, and therefore they cannot help but constantly fall into fear and anxiety. Jung hoped that people could, through the appearances of various social events, decipher the modern age from psychological and spiritual levels."

"From early on he accepted the pre-Qin philosophers, Records of the Grand Historian, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Dream of the Red Chamber, the Tongcheng school, and Chinese vernacular literature since the twentieth century; he even almost wanted to become a Chinese writer, but elders stopped him on the grounds that it would be hard to make a living."

"The freedom of the American people was conditional—it required obeying the law, and the law was quite clear, with little ambiguity, and enforcement was quite strict. For someone like me, a survivor of war who had come through a chaotic era, the rule of law in the United States in 1949 seemed like another world. Of course, there was often crime news in the newspapers, but in the lives of most of the people in the city of Cambridge where I lived, it seemed that no shadow of crime intruded. “No need to bolt the door at night, and nothing left lying on the road would be picked up” truly was a depiction of life at that time."

"At that time I was “in the mountains without knowing the mountains,” and did not know that I was living in a golden age, but I did have a deep impression of the master-level professors."

"Then let him continue to be there, unsmiling and unsparing—this is the privilege of modern innovators. If everything can be explained by the past, how could it still be called modern? If everything can be found supported in old books, how could it still be called innovation"

"With such broad coverage and such hunger, it would of course affect the time and energy for professional study, but viewed over the full course of life, it can truly be said to be “sharpening the knife does not delay cutting firewood”—he fundamentally remolded himself once."

"Before I turned eighteen, I had already fled disaster three times, lived in six cities (Ningbo, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Chongqing, Shanghai), and changed schools ten times. I had experienced gunfire (Hong Kong) and bombings (Guangzhou, Chongqing), and crossed battle lines (from Shanghai to Chongqing). I had a carefree childhood (Hong Kong), and also tasted the impassioned life of a middle school student during the War of Resistance (Chongqing); still more, I tasted the sorrow of leaving home and country, not knowing when I would return (from Hong Kong to the United States)."

"Jung said that not everyone living in modern times can be called a “modern person.” True modern people are very few; they stand neither in yesterday nor in tomorrow, but on the bridge from yesterday to tomorrow. A full awareness of this transitional state makes them simultaneously experience loneliness, because the broad masses are always unconsciously shrouded in the historical fog, and some even put on a pseudo-modern mask over a regressive essence. Only true modern people know that they are products of tradition and yet disloyal subjects of tradition; they know well the deficiencies of tradition and think day and night of using marginal creation to make up for them, but in their hearts they also understand that today’s creation will soon be surpassed, and therefore they cannot help but constantly fall into fear and anxiety. Jung hoped that people could, through the appearances of various social events, decipher the modern age from psychological and spiritual levels."