Some years ago, I wrote a book called the Emperor's New Mind and that book was describing a point of view I had about consciousness and why it was not something that comes about from complicated calculations.

I was indeed very slow as a youngster.

This book is about physics and its about physics and its relationship with mathematics and how they seem to be intimately related and to what extent can you explore this relationship and trust it.

Ordinary photons do have spin, they have a notion of helicity so they spin around their direction on motion.

Some years ago, I wrote a book called the Emperor's New Mind and that book was describing a point of view I had about consciousness and why it was not something that comes about from complicated calculations.

People think of these eureka moments and my feeling is that they tend to be little things, a little realisation and then a little realisation built on that.

Well I didn't actually see the Matrix but I've seen other movies where with similar sorts of themes.

As for morality, well that's all tied up with the question of consciousness.

If you didn't have any conscious beings in the world, there really wouldn't be morality but with consciousness that you have it.

But I think it is a serious issue to wonder about the other platonic absolutes of say beauty and morality.

My own way of thinking is to ponder long and I hope deeply on problems and for a long time which I keep away for years and years and I never really let them go.

As you say, the way string theory requires all these extra dimensions and this comes from certain consistency requirements about how string should behave and so on.

I'm pretty tenacious when it comes to problems.

So what I'm saying is why don't we think about changing Schrodinger's equation at some level when masses become too big at the level that you might have to worry about Einstein's general relativity.

In the book, I make the point that here we have string theory and here we have twistor theory and we don't know if either one of them is the right approach to nature.

The basic theory in twistor theory is not to add extra dimensions.

Well, I don't know if I can comment on Kant or Hegel because I'm no real philosopher in the sense of knowing what these people have said in any detail so let me not comment on that too much.

And these little things may not seem like much but after a while they take you off on a direction where you may be a long way off from what other people have been thinking about.

The idea is if you use those two shapes and try to colour the plane with them so the colours match, then the only way that you can do this is to produce a pattern which never repeats itself.

Well, gauge theory is very fundamental to our understanding of physical forces these days. But they are also dependent on a mathematical idea, which has been around for longer than gauge theory has.

Some people take the view that the universe is simply there, and it runs along - it's a bit as though it just sort of computes, and we happen by accident to find ourselves in this thing. I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe.

Some people take the view that we happen by accident. I think that there is something much deeper, of which we have very little inkling at the moment.

There is a certain sense in which I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there by chance.

If the computer-guided robots turn out to be our superiors in every respect, then will they not find that they can run the world better without the need of us at all? Humanity itself will then have become obsolete.

My actions to promote peace, the mediation missions which I carried out during many conflicts, which very often occurred between brothers of the same country, are not driven by any ulterior motives or any calculations based on personal ambitions.

The brain's calculations do not require our conscious effort, only our attention and our openness to let the information through. Although the brain absorbs universes of information, little is admitted into normal consciousness.

Some years ago, I wrote a book called the Emperor's New Mind and that book was describing a point of view I had about consciousness and why it was not something that comes about from complicated calculations.

The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.

It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.

There was a project at Lawrence Livermore National Labs where many years ago they went down this path for scripting and controlling very large numerical calculations.

Nowhere are our calculations more frequently upset than in war.

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

Arab leaders worry more about making money from the profits they get from oil and gas that they turn the other way when Lebanon is being destroyed right next to them. Their neighbours are being murdered, but they only make calculations for their own benefit.

As soon, however, as capitalist competition has definitively established the equal rate of profit, that rate becomes the starting point for the calculations of the capitalists in the investment of capital in newly-created branches of production.

I don't know whether you have done your calculations but, about two or three years back, I did a first assessment of what the first successful device would be worth and it came out at about 300 trillion dollars.

It is very distressing that anyone would look at these matters from a political viewpoint. Core beliefs about when life begins and ends are far too important for any such calculations.

Because of recent improvements in the accuracy of theoretical predictions based on large scale ab initio quantum mechanical calculations, meaningful comparisons between theoretical and experimental findings have become possible.

There are many different kinds of radioactive waste and each has its own half-life so, just to be on the safe side and to simplify matters, I base my calculations on the worst one and that's plutonium.

This means I must pay close attention to the writing, but equally so to the scientific background - which sometimes means doing fairly involved calculations.

Life it is not just a series of calculations and a sum total of statistics, it's about experience, it's about participation, it is something more complex and more interesting than what is obvious.

We have to choose between a global market driven only by calculations of short-term profit, and one which has a human face.

The essential elements of giving are power and love - activity and affection - and the consciousness of the race testifies that in the high and appropriate exercise of these is a blessedness greater than any other.

What's fascinating is that when you write a script, it's almost a stream of consciousness. You have an idea that it means something, but you're not always sure what. Then when you get on the set, the actors teach you.

A young man is stirred and stimulated by the consciousness of how much depends upon his own exertions: a young girl is oppressed by it.

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.

Life is a state of consciousness.

I've always been interested in the relationship between total external surround, culture, the political matrix, technology, etc., and the internal human consciousness.

There is no reality of consciousness independent of the effects of various vehicles of content on subsequent action (and hence, of course, on memory).

A man's thinking goes on within his consciousness in a seclusion in comparison with which any physical seclusion is an exhibition to public view.