The idea that global warming is the most important problem facing the world is total nonsense and is doing a lot of harm.

The pain of childbirth is not remembered. It's the child that's remembered.

The question that will decide our destiny is not whether we shall expand into space. It is: shall we be one species or a million? A million species will not exhaust the ecological niches that are awaiting the arrival of intelligence.

Mostly I'm just writing books for the public, and so I try to describe for the public what the choices are, what they might have to expect in the future and so by warning people ahead of time maybe you have an effect.

That was the wonderful thing about Ramanujan. He discovered so much, and yet he left so much more in his garden for other people to discover.

All the time worrying about pushing the children and getting them to be mathematically literate and all that stuff. It's terribly hard on the kids. It's also hard on the teachers. And I think it's totally useless.

Do not imagine that you have to know everything before you can do anything. My own best work was done when I was most ignorant.