I have learnt that situations in themselves are not inherently stressful. Our perception of situations is what creates stress for us. Some players thrive in the biggest sporting occasions and others struggle to cope.

The laws of cause and effect which govern our universe don't care about our beliefs – so we'd better find out what those laws are and try and align our beliefs to them to eliminate guesswork. The consequences if we don't? we'll get sick, we'll starve, our machines will break down.

We are hard wired through our biology to understand: what there is, what to do about what there is, that there is a difference between knowing what there is and knowing what to do about what there is and what the difference is.

I feel altogether confident that the historian of the future will estimate the past thirty years as the most extraordinary in the history of the world up to the present... there has been no period at all comparable with it unless it be the period about 300 years ago, which saw the development of Galilean and Newtonian mechanics. This was indeed of incalculable importance for the destinies of the race; the conceptions then introduced are not only the basis of modern material civilization, but they were the cause of a very complete change in man's whole intellectual and spiritual outlook- in his philosophy, his religion, and his morals.

I became a venture capitalist because I wanted to help society by creating jobs at a time of high unemployment in the UK. As the years went by, I realised that while we were indeed helping people who came from nothing to make money, improve the lives of people around them, create jobs, financial value and wealth- the gap between rich and poor was getting bigger, not smaller.