THE GUYS IN THE OLD DAYS WHO BELIEVED THE EARTH WAS ROUND MUST HAVE HAD A VERY ROUGH TIME WITH ACADEMIA

I don't get upset if people think I'm crazy. If you go to a mental hospital and someone calls you a name, would you get upset? Of course not. Well, that's the way I think about the world. They don't know any better.

War represents the supreme failure of nations to resolve their differences. From a strictly pragmatic standpoint, it is the most inefficient waste of lives and resources ever conceived.

We will never know what anyone is really like, until everyone has economic security and doesn't have to answer to anyone else.

Learning to be flexible in values takes a very long time...Of course I felt a little uncomfortable during questioning the concept of God, but then reading about the history and evolution of Gods. There were many different Gods: the God of war, the God of peace, the God of love, which was more like the people that invented them. They behaved, they got angry, they made sacrifices, they created floods when they didn't like the way things are going. This didn't come through as superior intelligence.

You can't exceed the system with language. You can only exceed the system with events; recommended procedures that are better. You can't exceed the system by telling people to be good, be kind, be considerate... You have to take away the conditions that makes it necessary for you to be kind. And to be kind, you design highways that aren't slippery; where no accidents, or less accidents, occur. In the future, everybody becomes an innovator - a creator.

Every action and decision we take – or don’t – ripples into the future. For the first time we have the capability, the technology, and the knowledge to direct these ripples.