It is important that legislation keeps pace with scientific progress.

Parents should talk to their children, even when they are babies and can't talk back.

My father died when I was nine, but I came from a stable family environment, which I think does contribute to being well-behaved.

Some of the hotels I've been put up in for work in Scotland have been shockingly bad. They're the type of hotel where the bedroom is like a cell and the Internet doesn't work. I feel quite aggrieved at that because you should at least be treated reasonably well and have basic comfort.

I actually don't mind whether people can choose the sex of the baby - in fact humans have been trying to do it for 3,000 years. But there is a real issue about the safety of the technique.

My own field, the prevention of genetic disorders in babies, has been possible only because of humane work on animals.

Childhood depression tends to be more common in inner cities, being most frequently related to serious social deprivation, bullying, domestic violence, wartime experience and famine. It is, for example, a serious problem among children who are traumatised refugees.

It is possible that strong levels of belief in God, gods, spirits or the supernatural might have given our ancestors considerable comforts and advantages.

I was born with my moustache and, no, I've never been tempted to shave it off. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about my face and, like Gilbert and Sullivan's Katisha, my best feature is my left shoulder-blade.

I don't much like being a public figure, because so often how people appear is not how they really are, and I think one of the issues about our society is that we make judgments about people on the basis of very flimsy evidence.

Over the past 20 years, I have presented many science programmes on BBC1. But none is, I think, more socially important, or of more human interest, than this ongoing series of 'Child of Our Time.'

I do not know of any credible evidence that suggests Dr. Zavos can clone a human being. This seems to be yet another one of his claims to get publicity.

I think scientific arrogance really does give a great degree of distrust. I think people begin to think that scientists like to believe that they can run the universe.

By discovering how our minds work, we can improve our learning power and unlock our true potential.

Carbon dioxide is unusual because it doesn't go through the usual three phases of matter, from solid to liquid to gas, but it goes straight from solid to gas. The volume of the gas is much greater than the volume of the solid. When a solid turns into a gas, we say it sublimes. The process is sublimation.

I think that good parenting should allow children to be children. That naivety and slightly open way of looking at the world is very valuable.

Scientists need to be prepared to engage, and the best people to engage with are students, ideally from primary school because there's no question that their capacity to work out complex things is extremely good.

Man is a competitive creature, and the seeds of conflict are built deep into our genes. We fought each other on the savannah and only survived against great odds by organising ourselves into groups which would have had a common purpose, giving morale and fortitude.

We must not confuse religion with God, or technology with science. Religion stands in relationship to God as technology does in relation to science. Both the conduct of religion and the pursuit of technology are capable of leading mankind into evil; but both can prompt great good.

Low socioeconomic status carries with it an enormously increased risk of a broad range of diseases, and this gradient cannot be fully explained by factors such as health-care access.

Baboons have the exact physiology as humans do. They also get the same stress-related illnesses, such as ulcers and heart disease.

If some baboons just happen to be good at seeing water holes as half full instead of half empty... we should be able to as well.

One definitely wants to have a functioning hippocampus. It's all about learning and memory, the part blown out of the water by Alzheimer's disease. It's also the part that is most vulnerable to the effects of stress.

We like our individuality, we like the mysteriousness of us, the essentialism of us, and it can be alarming to see the biological gears turning underneath.