The roots of tyranny and freedom trace back to long before recorded history, and are etched in our genes.

The many sorrows of our recent history suggest that we humans have a learning disability.

We knew the Moon from our earliest days. It was there when our ancestors descended from the trees into the savannahs, when we learned to walk upright, when we first devised stone tools, when we domesticated fire, when we invented agriculture and built cities and set out to subdue the Earth.

This zest to explore and exploit, however thoughtless its agents may have been, has clear survival value. It is not restricted to any one nation or ethnic group. It is an endowment that all members of the human species hold in common.

Like it or not, we humans are bound up with our fellows, and with the other plants and animals all over the world.Our lives are intertwined.

I remind myself that madmen really exist. Sometimes they achieve the highest levels of political power in modern industrial nations.

Vast migrations of people -some voluntary, most not- have shaped the human condition. More of us flee from war, oppression and famine today than at any other time in human history.

Civilization is a product of the cerebral cortex.

In the vastness of the Cosmos there must be other civilizations far older and more advanced than ours.