Successful technologies often begin as hobbies. Jacques Cousteau invented scuba diving because he enjoyed exploring caves. The Wright brothers invented flying as a relief from the monotony of their normal business of selling and repairing bicycles.

It's not going to be just humans colonizing space, it's going to be life moving out from the Earth, moving it into its kingdom. And the kingdom of life, of course, is going to be the universe.

What the world needs is a small, compact, flexible fusion technology that could make electricity where and when it is needed. The existing fusion program is leading to a huge source of centralized power, at a price that nobody except a government can afford.

The technologies that raise the fewest ethical problems are those that work on a human scale, brightening the lives of individual people.

Many of the technologies that are now racing ahead most rapidly, replacing human workers in factories and offices with machines, making stockholders richer and workers poorer, are indeed tending to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth.

If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives.

The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple.

Technology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich.

Technology without morality is barbarous; morality without technology is impotent.