Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

According to the scientific naturalist version of cosmic history, nature is a permanently closed system of material effects that can never be influenced by something from outside - like God, for example.

But I owe it to the subject to say, that it has long afforded me what philosophy is so often thought, and made, barren of - the fun of discovery, the pleasures of co-operation, and the satisfaction of reaching agreement.

The government plans to bring in a new science, technology and innovation policy in 2013.

I used to read science fiction a lot, and I still like science fiction when it is a model of how we really are and to see ourselves from another perspective.