In order to figure out how to make atoms compute, you have to learn how to speak their language and to understand how they process information under normal circumstances.

The primary consequence of the computational nature of the universe is that the universe naturally generates complex systems, such as life. Although the basic laws of physics are comparatively simple in form, they give rise, because they are computationally universal, to systems of enormous complexity.

Meaning is like pornography, you know it when you see it.

Of course, not everybody's willing to go out and do the experiments, but for the people who are willing to go out and do that, - if the experiments don't work, then it means it's not science.

Programmed by quanta, physics gave rise first to chemistry and then to life; programmed by mutations and recombination, life gave rise to Shakespeare; programmed by experience and imagination, Shakespeare gave rise to Hamlet.

The history of the universe is, in effect, a huge and ongoing quantum computation. The universe is a quantum computer.

Computers are famous for being able to do complicated things starting from simple programs.