What is it that really makes us, us? It's our collective intelligence. It's our ability to write things down, our language and our consciousness.

It's important to remember that we evolved. Now, I know that's a dirty word for some people, but we evolved from common ancestors with the gorillas, the chimpanzee and also the bonobos. We have a common past, and we have a common future.

What the fossil record does do is to force us to contemplate our place on the planet. We are but one species of several hominids that inhabited Planet Earth, and like our distant cousins who went extinct fairly recently, our time on Planet Earth is also finite.

With the discovery of Zinjanthropus at Olduvai Gorge in 1959, my grandmother Mary Leakey pioneered the research in East Africa with my grandfather Louis. Many more spectacular fossil finds have since been made, both in Africa and elsewhere, by many researchers driven to understand our past.

We need to drive down requirements for the schools. In the 19th century, we increased the quality of the schools by higher education saying, 'You can't come in unless you have these skills, unless you've taken these courses.' We did that in Wisconsin when I was there, it helped to transform the secondary school system.

As you get older, you grow and mature, and that should never stop. As soon as you stop growing, you're done living. I'll always be growing, forever learning, forever taking in advice from people I deeply respect.

Do what is best for most people, not just a few. Prevent your elites and growing middle class, those who often benefit most from growth and development, from turning into a special interests group that blocks reforms.

We take what we think are the tools of spiritual transformation into our own hands and try to sculpt ourselves into robust Christlike specimens. But spiritual transformation is primarily the work of the Holy Spirit. He is the Master Sculptor.