We have to live in the world as it is, not the world as we wish it would be, is something that we misunderstand. If we are realistic those ideals are usually out of reach, and in fact thinking about them and dreaming about them is a way to punish ourselves for the fact our lives are never going to match up to those ideals.

One of the key things to look out for is the centralisation of power – in most of the places we see conflict, there is highly centralised power, and often few checks and balances on whoever is in control. Unchecked interests can lead people to ignore the costs of war.

It makes you respect money more when it comes from something you create, rather than just trading back and forth with someone else's cash.

If you tried to achieve that purely through informal methods—where hallucination is a persistent risk—getting to the same level of consistent correctness would likely require a lot more research effort and resources.

I am not a big fan of the word hope, I am a big fan of the word determination. Being determined is a moral position, when you are depend on the word hope you are lazy.

I don't really think about legacy, I'm more interested in my next thing, my next project… my writing is driven by a love of music, and an affection for being around music, and for telling stories… I don't have a grand plan; this is my life.

...in the long-term, random investment strategies provide gains comparable to those seen where technical strategies are applied.

We were poor, had no branding, and had no money- the only way we could get people into store was to put everything on rollers, and move it to the side, so we could have yoga classes in the middle of the store- a lot of inventions come from the mother of necessity!

The scale of our damage on the animal world is unimaginable. We inflict pain and suffering on wild and domestic animals. We take away their wild lands and habitats, we use them to test our medicines and they're affected by climate change, pollution and many other aspects of our world. We are the master race. We are the creatures who impose our will on virtually everything that lives and breathes. It's deeply shocking when you start to think about the scale of it.

a country that stops its citizens having access to Facebook, say, or Google or Skype, faces real disadvantages – from inward investment to domestic discontent…

the overall picture that's emerging is that the controls which still work operate more along corporate boundaries than along national boundaries.

I am a father of two small children. When you have children, you have to ask yourself what the world will look like in the next 80-100 years, because people get that old these days if everything goes well. Last but not least, as a father I see it as my responsibility to think about my actions and my motives.