To achieve greatness means to maximise your potential at the highest possible level, and the highest possible rate. I don't really consider myself the best, but the fact that people consider me the best I take as a great honour and as testament to the hard work and what I was able to achieve.

Numerous studies including recent ones from Stanford and Harvard Universities show that young girls, by the age of six, in the U.S. feel they are less intellectually capable than boys. Why? Because when they open a history book, they are predominantly exposed to male innovators.

I want to free everyone from that misconception. You can't know everything. And when you shift from a personal attribution for not knowing—thinking, 'I don't know, but everyone else seems to, so I'll fake it or avoid the situation'—to a universal attribution—realizing, 'I don't know, you don't know, nobody knows'—you stand taller. This allows you to embrace what I believe is the most successful mindset: confident uncertainty.

What has happened is that by relinquishing our influence, we have encouraged China and Russia to become even more active in the region. The competition with China and Russia is unfolding right within the Middle East.

The first thing to do for our ecology is not to use less electricity, it's to cease buying things that are not useful.