Somebody talked me into writing an autobiography about six or seven years ago. And I said I'd try. We talked into a tape recorder, and after a couple of months, I said, To hell with it. I was so depressed. It was like saying, 'This is the end.' I was more interested in what the hell was coming the next day or the next week.

I'm a strange mixture of my mother's curiosity; my father, who grew up the son of the manse in a Presbyterian family, who had a tremendous sense of duty and responsibility; and my mother's father, who was always in trouble with gambling debts.

If the sea level rises 6 inches, that's a big deal... we can't mitigate that; we can't stop it. We've just got to stop building vast houses on seashores and go back a little bit.

It's been a long career, and I've made some mistakes along the way.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.

I will get my education - if it is in home, school, or anyplace.

Every moral teacher or spiritual adviser gives injunctions about how to live wisely and well. But life is so complicated and full of uncertainty that rules seldom tell us quite what to do.

Being a native of Spain, the country to which I owe much of my education and cultural background, I was deeply influenced by my great predecessor Santiago Ramon y Cajal.