Jean de la Bruyere

All men's misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.

Two quite opposite qualities equally bias our minds - habits and novelty.

The wise person often shuns society for fear of being bored.

People of the future may suffer not from an absence of choice but from a paralysing surfeit of it. They may turn out to be victims of that peculiarly super-industrial dilemma: overchoice.

If you compare NASA's annual budget to explore the heavens, that one year budget would fund NOAA's budget to explore the oceans for 1,600 years.

The weird thing about grief, for me at least, was when each of my parents died, for a year or two afterwards I was pretty wildly brave - just willing to take life on.