“Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.”

Our brain is mapping the world. Often that map is distorted, but it’s a map with constant immediate sensory input.

If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way.

In some ways, I had a traditional ‘old South’ upbringing, meaning that I spent some time in a military school, and acquired an

Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the ‘environmentalist’ view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.

The two major challenges for the 21st century are to improve the economic situation of the majority and save as much of the planet as we can.

A very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.

The education of women is the best way to save the environment.

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.

Every kid has a bug period… I never grew out of mine.

If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.

It’s always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That’s just in human relationships.

Well, let me tell you, ants are the dominant insects. They make up as much as a quarter of the biomass of all insects in the world. They are the principal predators. They’re the cemetery workers.

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

The essence of humanity’s spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and the empiricist world views?

In 2010, my two Harvard mathematician colleagues and I dismantled kin-selection theory, which was the reigning theory of the origin of altruism at the time.

Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds… is not productive.

I don’t run restaurants that are out of control. We are about establishing phenomenal footholdings with talent.

Would I swap what I have achieved as a cook if I could have been as successful as a footballer? Definitely.

Cooking a dish is fine; cooking it under pressure is a completely different ballgame.

If I relaxed, if I took my foot off the gas, I would probably die.

Cooking today is a young man’s game, I don’t give a bollocks what anyone says.

I cook, I create, I’m incredibly excited by what I do, I’ve still got a lot to achieve.

Being a chef never seems like a job, it becomes a true passion.

I cook for a living; I’m not a scheduler.