It’s a lot easier to see, at least in some cases, what the long-term limits of the possible will be, because they depend on natural law. But it’s much harder to see just what path we will follow in heading toward those limits.

The basic parts, the start-up molecules, can be supplied in abundance and don’t have to be made by some elaborate process. That immediately makes things simpler.

I’ve encountered a lot of people who sound like critics but very few who have substantive criticisms. There is a lot of skepticism, but it seems to be more a matter of inertia than it is of people having some real reason for thinking something else.

On the molecular scale, you find it’s reasonable to have a machine that does a million steps per second, a mechanical system that works at computer speeds.

But if we can manage it so people don’t have things forced on them that they don’t want, I think there’s every reason to believe things can settle out in a situation that is recognizably better than the one we’re stuck in today.

Protein engineering is a technology of molecular machines – of molecular machines that are part of replicators – and so it comes from an area that already raises some of the issues that nanotechnology will raise.

And that because the moving parts are a million times smaller than the ones we’re familiar with, they move a million times faster, just as a smaller tuning fork produces a higher pitch than a large one.

In thinking about nanotechnology today, what’s most important is understanding where it leads, what nanotechnology will look like after we reach the assembler breakthrough.

...Local prohibitions cannot block advances in military and commercial technology... Democratic movements for local restraint can only restrain the world's democracies, not the world as a whole.

In a sense, artificial intelligence will be the ultimate tool because it will help us build all possible tools.