What I tend to do is to wake about five in the morning-this happens quite often-think about the invention, and then image it in my mind in 3D, as a kind of construct. Then I do experiments with the image...sort of rotate it, and say, 'Well what'll happen if one does this?' And by the time I get up for breakfast I can usually go to the bench and make a string and sealing wax model that works straight off, because I've done most of the experiments already.

What we have lived through, the 20th century, has been like a great party. Adults now have had the best time humanity has ever had. Now the party is over and the Earth is reckoning up.

The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful.

Florida will be gone altogether, the whole damned place, in not too long.

Esso has been the main one in America spreading the disinformation that there is no global warming problem.

Our future is like that of the passengers on a small pleasure boat sailing quietly above the Niagara Falls, not knowing that the engines are about to fail.

There is little evidence that our individual intelligence has improved through recorded history.