We are the intelligent elite among animal life on earth and whatever our mistakes, [Earth] needs us. This may seem an odd statement after all that I have said about the way 20th century humans became almost a planetary disease organism. But it has taken [Earth] 2.5 billion years to evolve an animal that can think and communicate its thoughts. If we become extinct she has little chance of evolving another.

If we gave up eating beef we would have roughly 20 to 30 times more land for food than we have now.

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.

We'd never have got a chance to go outside and look at the earth if it hadn't been for space exploration and NASA.

You never know with politicians what they are really saying. And I don't say that in a negative way-they have an appalling job.

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.

Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor.