There is a certain sense in which I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance. Some people take the view that the universe is simply there and it runs along-it's a bit as though it just sort of computes, and we happen by accident to find ourselves in this thing. I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe, I think that there is something much deeper about it, about its existence, which we have very little inkling of at the moment.

Understanding is, after all, what science is all about — and science is a great deal more than mindless computation.

And these little things may not seem like much but after a while they take you off on a direction where you may be a long way off from what other people have been thinking about.

There are considerable mysteries surrounding the strange values that Nature's actual particles have for their mass and charge. For example, there is the unexplained 'fine structure constant' ... governing the strength of electromagnetic interactions.

Ambition, idly vain; revenge and malice swell her train.

If you didn’t have any conscious beings in the world, there really wouldn’t be morality but with consciousness that you have it.

The basic theory in twistor theory is not to add extra dimensions.