Science is the one culture that's truly global - protons, proteins and Pythagoras's Theorem are the same from China to Peru. It should transcend all barriers of nationality. It should straddle all faiths, too.

To most people in the U.K., indeed throughout Western Europe, space exploration is primarily perceived as 'what NASA does'. This perception is - in many respects - a valid one. Superpower rivalry during the Cold War ramped up U.S. and Soviet space efforts to a scale that Western Europe had no motive to match.

During the 20th century, we came to understand that the essence of all substances - their colour, texture, hardness and so forth - is set by their structure, on scales far smaller even than a microscope can see. Everything on Earth is made of atoms, which are, especially in living things, combined together in intricate molecular assemblages.

If you take 10,000 people at random, 9,999 have something in common: their interests in business lie on or near the Earth's surface. The odd one out is an astronomer, and I am one of that strange breed.

Maybe the search for life shouldn't restrict attention to planets like Earth. Science fiction writers have other ideas: balloon-like creatures floating in the dense atmospheres of planets such as Jupiter, swarms of intelligent insects, nano-scale robots and more.

Some global hazards are insidious. They stem from pressure on energy supplies, food, water and other natural resources. And they will be aggravated as the population rises to a projected nine billion by mid-century, and by the effects of climate change. An 'ecological shock' could irreversibly degrade our environment.

We are 'nuclear waste' from the fuel that makes stars shine; indeed, each of us contains atoms whose provenance can be traced back to thousands of different stars spread through our Milky Way.

The stupendous time spans of the evolutionary past are now part of common culture (though maybe not in the United States Bible Belt, nor in parts of the Islamic world). Most people are at ease with the idea that our present biosphere is the outcome of four billion years of Darwinian evolution.

There is an ever-widening gap between what science allows and what we should actually do. There are many doors science can open that should be kept closed, on prudential or ethical grounds.

The most important advances, the qualitative leaps, are the least predictable. Not even the best scientists predicted the impact of nuclear physics, and everyday consumer items such as the iPhone would have seemed magic back in the 1950s.

A telephone number shouldn't represent a home or a car or a restaurant, but instead a person.

There were a lot of naysayers over the years. People would say, 'Why are we spending all of this money? Are you sure this cellular thing will turn out to be something?'

The only thing that was in my mind when we made that first phone call was, 'Is it going to work?' We had all these parts hand soldered together, engineers standing by with the soldering iron - just in case.

Yes, I was the one people credit with inventing the cell phone. Now, whenever anyone gets a dropped call, they blame me.

Whatever happened to courtesy? What can be so urgent that you have to look down at your phone in the middle of a dinner conversation with people who matter to you? You can't wait five minutes before staring at your phone?

I'm a science-fiction fan. All science fiction ends up being reality.

I like to think about the future and how things can be done better than they are now. That's what engineers do.

As soon as I get a typical day, I'll know I'm in trouble. I like doing different things all the time.

Star Trek made dreaming legitimate.

WattUp is one of those rare breakthroughs that recognizes that the so-called 'battery' problem in wireless devices is solved with a charging solution that is transparent to the user. The cell phone with a dead battery can become a relic of the past. The days of wired, mat-based and proximity charging are over.

I think projects often fail because people do not have a clear understanding at the start what they are trying to deliver.

Cellular companies don't innovate, they just buy more spectrum.

We all know how tough children are with toys. It turns out grownups are much worse.

My rule is, if you want to build something that does all things for all people, it's not going to work real well.