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

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

I suspect any worries about genetic engineering may be unnecessary. Genetic mutations have always happened naturally, anyway.

There is no clear distinction anywhere on the Earth's surface between living and nonliving matter. There is merely a hierarchy of intensity going from the 'material' environment of the rocks and the atmosphere to the living cells.

If you start any large theory, such as quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, evolution, it takes about 40 years for mainstream science to come around. Gaia has been going for only 30 years or so.

We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened. The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now. The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time. The temperature has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising - carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.

Just after World War II, this country led the world in science by every way you could measure it, yet the number of scientists was a tiny proportion of what it is now.