Boiled down to one sentence, my message is the unboundedness of life and the unboundedness of human destiny.

The public knows that human beings are fallible. Only people blinded by ideology fall into the trap of believing in their own infallibility.

I think that the artificial-intelligence people are making a lot of noise recently, claiming that artificial intelligence is making huge progress and we're going to be outstripped by the machines. But, in my view, this whole field is based on a misconception. I think the brain is analog, whereas the machines are digital. They really are different. So I think that what the machines can do, of course, is wonderful, but it's not the same as what the brain can do.

There is no way to find the best design except to try out as many designs as possible and discard the failures.

Science is a human activity, and the best way to understand it is to understand the individual human beings who practise it. Science is an art form and not a philosophical method. The great advances in science usually result from new tools rather than from new doctrines. ... Every time we introduce a new tool, it always leads to new and unexpected discoveries, because Nature's imagination is richer than ours.

I think the biggest misconception is that everybody has to learn mathematics. That seems to be a complete mistake.

Technology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich.