Now, we don't teach children in schools to be creative. We don't teach them to experiment. We want them to fill in the right answer, tick the right answer in the box.

One of the most fun inventions of my lifetime is the Mini.

I like living on the edge.

If you really want to improve technology, if you want things to work better and be better, you've got to protect the person who spends a lot of effort, money, and time developing that new technology.

Cordless vacuums are designed for quick jobs, but you need enough power to do the job; you don't want the power waning over time.

Everybody recognizes that if you can make very efficient electric motors, you can make a quantum leap forward.

Well, I'm rather attracted to rather prosaic things like vacuum cleaners and hand dryers. Where people haven't apparently made them with a great love for what they're doing.

I've obviously used fans - I wouldn't say all my life, because we couldn't afford them when I was young, but from my 20s and onwards we've had to use fans. And I've always loathed them. Everything about them. The way you adjust them, getting them at the angle you want. Carrying them. Cleaning them. The danger of putting your finger in them.

Well, air-conditioning is not a good thing.

I think people are realizing that engineering and science are extremely good degrees to get and you'll be very highly paid once you've got them.

The British judiciary needs to support intellectual property.

Companies are not ingenious, it's the people in them that are.

I grew up running miles of the Norfolk coastline. I'd think nothing of a six-mile run before breakfast. I still run, though not as far and not before muesli.

I was frustrated as a child when I had to use a vacuum. It had a screaming noise and the smell of stale dog and a lack of performance.

The media thinks that you have to make science sexy and concentrate on themes such as rivalry and the human issues.

Goodness, I know nothing about nuclear energy.

The Web is fascinating and transformative, but it's an easy, flashy, get-rich-quick option to the hard graft of proper industry.

My interest in film is sort of catholic - apart from science fiction and horror movies, I'll watch almost everything.

I hate science fiction.

I imported the first Mac into England in 1984; you know, the beige box. I imported what I think were the first four that came into England. I never opened the instruction manual. That was the best thing about it.

The wonderful thing about Apple technology is just how intuitive it is.

Far too few designers put any thought into usability, ending up with a great product that's completely inaccessible.

Today, computers are almost second nature to most of us.

Anger is a good motivator.

Nobody wants the expenditure of a lease on a factory which lasts 21 years. You can't plan 21 years ahead.

Insurance companies don't make anything.

I'm not a businessman.

Beauty can come in strange forms.

I think the search engines are the new equivalent of publishing: an enabler of information.

I want entrepreneurs to be engineers and scientists and designers; they don't necessarily have to be Internet entrepreneurs or retail entrepreneurs.

Some people are academically inclined, some vocationally and we shouldn't penalise the latter.

Britain's great strength is its innovative, design and engineering natural ability and we're not using it.

In the past, the U.K. got away with selling things that weren't unusual. Now it's no use trying to export without having something that's unusual and better.

I myself scraped seven poor passes at O-level.

China has all the advantages in the world. But it doesn't have a history of free thinking, risk-taking pioneers - the kind of people the U.S. is built upon.

Arbitrary benchmarks cheat kids out of a fulfilling education.

When I started off, I was working in a shed behind my house. All I had was a drill, an electric drill. That was the only machine I had.

I don't design down to a price.

I own every share of my company, and I don't want to sell any of it.

I've fought court battles over my inventions before.

China can and will be an invaluable trading partner to both the U.S. and the U.K.

An inventor's path is chorused with groans, riddled with fist-banging and punctuated by head scratches.

Don't listen to experts.