The technologies that raise the fewest ethical problems are those that work on a human scale, brightening the lives of individual people.

The purpose of thinking about the future is not to predict it but to raise people's hopes.

Many of the technologies that are now racing ahead most rapidly, replacing human workers in factories and offices with machines, making stockholders richer and workers poorer, are indeed tending to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth.

The public knows that human beings are fallible. Only people blinded by ideology fall into the trap of believing in their own infallibility.

Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people.

I'm a mathematician, basically. What I do is look around for problems where I can find useful applications for mathematics. All I do, really, is the math, and other people have the ideas.