When decisions on nuclear power stations and runways are delayed and the government dilly-dallies, people think they aren't important.

I want entrepreneurs to be engineers and scientists and designers; they don't necessarily have to be Internet entrepreneurs or retail entrepreneurs.

We need to encourage investors to invest in high-technology startups.

Exactly 5,126 attempts to make the first bagless vacuum cleaner were failures-some catastrophic disappointments, some minor defects. It took 15 years. Prototype 5,127 was the success ... Failure is painful, but it spurs on improvement like nothing else.

Manufacturing is more than just putting parts together. It's coming up with ideas, testing principles and perfecting the engineering, as well as final assembly.

Engineering is treated with disdain, on the whole. It's considered to be rather boring and irrelevant, yet neither of those is true.

The media thinks that you have to make science sexy and concentrate on themes such as rivalry and the human issues.