The idea of a group of elders is that, in past civilizations, they have linked worlds; the other world was also present in this one. There is also the argument that elders have "experience." The problem is that experience teaches fear of change. Experience kills imagination. Experience makes people conservative. What we are facing tomorrow requires the force of imagination, not wisdom from yesterday.

What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on.

We are living in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of short-term thinking.

When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.

We are human beings, and we have faith, and we have hope

There was wildlife, untouched, a jungle at the border of the sea, never seen by those who floated on the opaque roof. Describing his early experience, in 1936, when a fellow naval officer, Philippe Tailliez, gave him goggles to see below the Mediterranean Sea surface.

However fragmented the world, however intense the national rivalries, it is an inexorable fact that we become more interdependent every day. I believe that national sovereignties will shrink in the face of universal interdependence. The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: We are all in the same boat.