When I say "an energy miracle," I mean that there will be some form of energy whose 24 hour cost really is competitive with hydrocarbons given, say, 20 years of learning curve. You invent it, then you look at how much its costs go down over the next 20 years, that it really beats hydrocarbons.

I feel pretty stupid that I don't know any foreign languages. I wish I knew French or Arabic or Chinese.

The scientific understanding of some of these [childhood] diseases is advancing quite rapidly. There's some things like premature birth or nutrition, first day deaths that we need a lot more insights so that we can build the tools to solve those problems.

I've for some reason or other... never met Donald Trump.

When I was trying to figure out why lives have improved so much in the last 300 years, where we've gone from a third of kids dying before 5 to - by 1990 it was down to 10% - now it's down to 5%. And saying why, over all history, there were smart people, but that number didn't change. Average life span didn't change. What's magical about what's been deemed the Industrial Revolution? It's really energy intensity.

The most amazing philanthropists are people who are actually making a significant sacrifice.

Life is not a continuous process, there's some sort of finite number of achievements that defines your life.