“Right, well, we've got to work out what we need. We've got to work out what we need, how we get it, and what we need to get to get what we need.”

“We were on a joyride, on free energy almost. […] It seems to me we need something like the Manhattan Project. We need some urgency saying, "Here's what we should be doing. We've got to get off fossil fuels."”

“We may not get what we want, when we want. But with a bit of perseverance and a lot of patience, we can get what we need.”

“Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.”

“We need myths to get by. We need story; otherwise the tremendous randomness of experience overwhelms us. Story is what penetrates.”

“World peace is as simple and elegant as E=mc2. Peace is not a mystery. We know what peace is. The questions are: How do we get there? How long does it take to get there? Do we need another Einstein to help figure this out?”

“Until we have the black working class and the Hispanic working class getting high-value-added jobs, we've failed as a society. To me: citizens first. And we don't need a million immigrants in this country. Particularly, we don't need a million immigrants that don't come with a real set of skills.”

“We need to get out of the old language.”

“We need to get environmentalism out of the sphere of religion. We need to stop the mythic fantasies, and we need to stop the doomsday predictions. We need to start doing hard science instead.”

“We may need to focus here.'
'Right. Yes. OK. Turn around.'
'Are you going to throw something at me?'
'What? No, I'm getting out of bed.”