As a teacher, my strategy is to encourage questioning. I'm the least authoritarian professor you'll ever meet.

Over time, the welfare state has become dysfunctional in a surprising way. But in a way it became a victim of its own success: It became so successful at prolonging life, that it becomes financially unsustainable, unless you make major changes to things like retirement ages.

When I first came to Oxford, I struggled to feel comfortable in an Anglican, public school-dominated institution.

The British press has an insatiable appetite for making public things that should be private. It's a prurience that I've never understood.

You can't do things for money. You just can't act them. There's gotta be something about the script that you really want to do. I wouldn't do a job if I didn't think I could do the best work I possibly could.

Prosperity in human society is misunderstood. The difference between a rich and poor society is the number of problems that society solves for its citizens. That means technological innovation is the source of all prosperity, but with every tech innovation, you also get disruption - ultimately, social and civic disruption.

That was real baseball. We weren't playing for money. They gave us Mickey Mouse watches that ran backwards.

I spend time with people who are movers and shakers, and others who are just friends I really care for. Some of them are rich, some of them are poor. I couldn't care less. I'm not a snob.