Wisdom in fragments

A regional war in say, South Asia, which involved as few as one hundred nuclear bombs would result in firestorms in their urban centres that would put so much smoke and particulate into the atmosphere that the earth would be covered in a cloud that would reflect sunlight back into space and reduce global temperatures but two to three degrees for several years. This would kill most food crops on the planet, resulting in massive famines and starvation.

Nuclear weapons expert and president of the Ploughshares Fund.

The result would be immediately one of the greatest catastrophes since World War II. Hundreds of thousands would die. It would cause trillions of dollars of immediate economic damage as buildings were vaporised. The real damage, though, would come in the days and weeks after, when there would undoubtedly be a global panic.

Nuclear weapons expert and president of the Ploughshares Fund.

Nuclear weapons continue to be built for basically two reasons: power and prestige. In almost every case where a country has decided to acquire a nuclear weapon they have done it either for power—the power to protect their country from external threats or a desire to project their power in the region.

Nuclear weapons expert and president of the Ploughshares Fund.

Nuclear weapons were invented out of fear. The United States was afraid that Hitler was developing an atomic weapon, and they had to get one to deter him from ever using it. When the U.S. Manhattan Project that built the bomb began, no-one ever thought we would use a weapon like this; it was considered beyond the pale—a weapon that would indiscriminately kill hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.

Nuclear weapons expert and president of the Ploughshares Fund.

Osborne lacked gravitas and was seen as a political lightweight because of his high-pitched vocal delivery according to private Conservative polling before the election.

Governor of the Bank of England (2003-2013)

The head of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, privately criticised David Cameron and George Osborne before the election for their lack of experience, the lack of depth in their inner circle and their tendency to think about issues only in terms of their electoral impact.

Governor of the Bank of England (2003-2013)

Technology is no longer a separate segment- it is pervasive. It is technology IN agriculture, IN governance, IN education, IN health. It is also about health technologies, education technologies and agricultural technologies- there are two sides to it.

Telecom Pioneer & Advisor to Indian Government on Technology Policy

Innovation is not about products or scientific laboratories- it is also about governance, education and everything we do as people. It is not about scientists alone innovating.

Telecom Pioneer & Advisor to Indian Government on Technology Policy

Almost all of the processes we use today were designed in the twentieth century, with the old mindset of command and control. Forms and data such as immigration, customs, starting a company, land records, birth certificates, death certificates, police reports, court cases- all these processes, designed in the twentieth century, are now obsolete. You have to redesign your processes to meet the needs of the twenty first century, and the web.

Telecom Pioneer & Advisor to Indian Government on Technology Policy

Telecommunications has connected India- and has brought about openness, accessibility, connectivity, networking, democratisation, decentralisation and as a result- social transformation.

Telecom Pioneer & Advisor to Indian Government on Technology Policy

When I entered the telecom scene in India, in the early nineteen eighties, we had two million telephones for seven hundred and fifty million people. It used to take fifteen years to get a telephone connection. In a very short space of time, just twenty five years, we have seven hundred and fifty million telephones. We are adding ten million every month, month after month, and for the first time in the history of India- we are a connected nation of over a billion people.

Telecom Pioneer & Advisor to Indian Government on Technology Policy

A nervous system is just a group of cells specialised in transmitting impulses from one to another. Ordinary plant cells can do this, albeit in a less efficient way. It is indisputable that there is no need of this "Holy Grail" of a nervous system to have the miracle of the transmission of electrical signals and communication.

Plant neurobiologist and founder of the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology.

Every plant has to endlessly sense and monitor a number of environmental parameters; and is constantly called upon to make decisions. This is not the place to list numerous cases of intelligence behaviour in plants, a huge volume of such examples can be found in scientific literature.

Plant neurobiologist and founder of the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology.

In biology we are still in a kind of Ptolemaic era with man considering himself the centre of the universe.

Plant neurobiologist and founder of the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology.

Intelligence is the ability to solve problems. For me intelligence is a property of life. Even the most humble unicellular living organism must be intelligent to solve the problems of everyday life. Human intelligence is, for want of a better phrase, a degree of magnitude greater than the intelligence of a Paramecium or, better, of a Chlamydomonas; but the difference is just quantitative and not qualitative.

Plant neurobiologist and founder of the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology.

DNA is not life. A single chemical molecule has nothing to do with life. DNA is merely a storage system. Nobody would ever say that the "Divine Comedy" is the actual paper and ink on which one of its copies is printed, however many influential scientists have supported this nonsensical viewpoint.

Plant neurobiologist and founder of the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology.