Identities are useful – if you had to make everything up in your life, from the start, with no input whatsoever – that wouldn't be freedom – you'd be less free; you'd have to think constantly about what you should or should not do. There would be no structure for your life choices.

This principle demands careful consideration of protection that must be given to civilians and civilian property, balancing military objectives against foreseeable collateral damage. This balance cannot be made by a formulaic algorithm – there isn't one – but by human judgment.

There's a moment when you look at good art when time changes… It's as if time no longer exists, becomes longer, or is suspended. There's a moment of reverie when you're fully immersed in something apart from yourself. One experiences this sometimes in meditation. These inexplicable, wonderful and mysterious experiences we have never leave us.

You can almost think of it like three sock puppets! You, this little chimp, and a computer, trying to run your life.

The discipline I worked in was called SETI- The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Of course, that latter word is a misnomer. We don't know how to define intelligence or detect it at a distance. What we have done is to use technology as a proxy for intelligence- and therefore we have been looking for evidence of someone else's technology.

When you start- the thing that you start with is almost never the thing that becomes successful. Lo-and-behold, in April 1998, when we finally launched this company – they were right, it didn't work, it was a terrible idea.

Diversity brings interesting ideas, interesting challenges and creativity. If there are too many females in a field, then get more men! If there are too many men in a field, get more women!

Anyone who takes the DMT space seriously is forced to live a kind of parallel life. You slip back into 'normal life mode' and almost have to ignore the implications of what you saw. It shows you that this tawdry, flimsy domain we think is foundational to reality is actually nothing more than a theatre screen.

An actor who isn't acting becomes a sort of non-person. If you're not acting, what are you?

You can't just market your way out of a bad product.

The only way for you to discover something new is to acknowledge the ocean of ignorance in which you are just an island. Experts have a problem with that – they want to get prizes, and get recognised by their colleagues and peers as being very smart. So, when something new comes along... an anomaly... it often gets dismissed for the sake of reputation management.

There's an entirely different category of knowledge, the utility of which isn't immediately apparent. This category is equally, if not more, crucial, especially for those aspiring to make creative or innovative strides.