I think that what the machines can do, of course, is wonderful, but it's not the same as what the brain can do.

Committees do harm merely by existing.

One factor that has remained constant through all the twists and turns of the history of physical science is the decisive importance of the mathematical imagination.

It makes very little sense to believe the output of the climate models.

The Ph.D. system was designed for a job in academics. And it works really well if you really want to be an academic, and the system actually works quite well. So for people who have the gift and like to go spend their lives as scholars, it's fine. But the trouble is that it's become a kind of a meal ticket - you can't get a job if you don't have a Ph.D.

What the world needs is a small, compact, flexible fusion technology that could make electricity where and when it is needed. The existing fusion program is leading to a huge source of centralized power, at a price that nobody except a government can afford.

We cannot hope to either understand or to manage the carbon in the atmosphere unless we understand and manage the trees and the soil too.