“Which came first, the mind or the idea of the mind? Have you never wondered? They arrived together. The mind is an idea.”

I write with teenagers in mind.

In the end, living is defined by dying. Book-ended by oblivion, we are caught in the vice of terror, squeezed to bursting by the approaching end. Fear is ever-present, waiting to be called to the surface. Change brought fear, and fear brought destruction.

Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism.

I try not to be surprised. Surprise is the public face of a mind that has been closed.

Science is a little bit more than a wonderful way of modelling and predicting; its a wonderful technical abstraction. I think science is a really wonderful technical abstraction.

Consciousness is the feel of accessing memory.

The more the media peddled fear, the more the people lost the ability to believe in one another. For every new ill that befell them, the media created an explanation, and the explanation always had a face and a name.

Are you saying a society wracked by plague is preferable to one wracked by indifference?

I cannot choose to ignore this feeling, of life slowly bleeding out of me. I cannot ignore the fact that life only makes sense to me when I see a smile, or feel another hand in mine.

Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence.

The mind is not a machine, it is an idea. And the Idea resists all attempts to control it.

… from our vantage point it is now clear that the only thing the population had to fear was fear itself.

In the end, living is defined by dying.

Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.

Our world is limited by the machinery we carry. Its very different to the 18th and 19th century Enlightenment scientists who were mostly men of God and thought it was their quest to uncover Gods great plan.

I cant see any great evidence that humans have any ability to access anything other than the material world. Beyond that, who knows, but theres no good evidence that would take me to any particular belief.

It’s hard to win in the NFL. You have to maintain a very delicate balance putting together the right team to be able to win and have any amount of success.

We had a relationship that lasted 44 years. Herbert and I lived together 10 years before we were married. He always gave me a little heart for whatever anniversary.

It was great being together as a band, but much more difficult being brothers than it was being in a band.

While holding the eurozone together will be costly and difficult and painful for the politicians, breaking it up will be even more costly and more difficult.

Legislators have a formal set of responsibilities to work together, but there’s no hierarchy.

Many say our world is at a tipping point. If we do not act together, if we do not act responsibly, if we do not act now, we risk slipping into a cycle of poverty, degradation, and despair.

We must not become the new puritans and reject our society. We must address and master the future together. It can be done if we restore the belief that we share a sense of national community, that we share a common national endeavor. It can be done.

It’s the people who love us or hate us – or both – who hold together the thousands of fragments we are made of.