All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control. Describing John von Neumann's aspiration for the application of computers sufficiently large to solve the problems of meteorology, despite the sensitivity of the weather to small perturbations.

The universe in some sense must have known that we were coming.

In the future, a new generation of artists will be writing genomes as fluently as Blake and Byron wrote verses.

There is nothing so big nor so crazy that one out of a million technological societies may not feel itself driven to do, provided it is physically possible.

Our thinking is permeated by our historical myths

That's what I learned from World War II. Things are always more complicated than most people believe.

The bottom line for mathematicians is that the architecture has to be right. In all the mathematics that I did, the essential point was to find the right architecture. It's like building a bridge. Once the main lines of the structure are right, then the details miraculously fit. The problem is the overall design.