In a weird way, when everyone's feeling that the world's going to hell in a hand basket, I kind of relax a little more because I often feel like that.

If technology is a drug – and it does feel like a drug – then what, precisely, are the side-effects?

The biggest teenage taboo is being strait-laced. It's easy to tell a researcher you went to a house party that turned into an orgy. It's less easy to say you like eating toast and watching QI.

My theory is that we used to have several personalities, and now we're encouraged to have one online.

Man the lifeboats. The idiots are winning.

That's not something that we've gone in thinking 'Right! How are we going to examine that now?' It's just when you take a step back you see that they're actually all sort of in that mode.

Whenever anything nice happens in the world I always expect something appalling to happen immediately afterwards.

I'm actually quite pro-technology, but I'm a worrier, so I like to envision worst-case scenarios.

Technology by default became the thing that was a new thing that had swept in and was altering it everything.

The iPad falls between two stools - not quite a laptop, not quite a smartphone. In other words, it's the spork of the electronic consumer goods world.

In summary, our world is doomed.

Pressure is an artist

The species and the genus are always the work of nature [i.e. specially created]; the variety mostly that of circumstance; the class and the order are the work of nature and art.

One of the best means for arousing the wish to work on yourself is to realize that you may die at any moment. But first you must learn how to keep it in mind.

I've always been interested in a lot of things, and a lot of things at the same time, and I always tried to explain them to myself. I ask a lot of questions.

Expression and the right to express is vital, anyone can be artistic.

Nonviolence is an imperative in order to bring about ultimate community.

We all have friends we love dearly that couldn't pass for human in a strict Turing test.

An ordinary fool isn't a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible!

Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?

The truth is, every sport has been turned into a huge, nihilistic business.