A genius is somebody who seemingly just reaches out of nowhere.

Self-awareness is a trait that not only makes us human but also paradoxically makes us want to be more than merely human. As I said in my BBC Reith Lectures, “Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don’t feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence

Our ability to perceive the world around us seems so effortless that we tend to take it for granted.

Even today no computer can understand language as well as a three-year-old or see as well as a mouse.

Great art allows you to transcend your mortal frame and to reach for the stars. I think great science does the same thing.

Without ducking responsibility, what's wrong with medicine today is that it is predicated on providing treatment, not on reducing suffering. Not on solving problems.

Lofty questions about the mind are fascinating to ask, philosophers have been asking them for three millennia both in India where I am from and here in the West - but it is only in the brain that we can eventually hope to find the answers.