Whether a matter is great or small, its importance and weight depend on whose hands it is in.

There are things you can replace, and others you cannot. The time has come to weigh those things, this space is getting hot.

To truly weigh choices, it’s necessary to bring them into the physical world. Have them acted out, played out, or built into a model. Descriptions do not do ideas justice.

Measures, weights, proportions move and change in expression and meaning.

Solving the value-loading problem is a research challenge worthy of some of the next generation’s best mathematical talent. We cannot postpone confronting this problem until the AI has developed enough reason to easily understand our intentions.

When a student picks a research topic, the decision is influenced by the research interests of the advisor, the state of the field in which the problem lives, the personality of the advisor, the chemistry between them ... who else in working on whichever problem. It's immensely complicated. And asking for a sort of simple prescription for how to assign research problems — it reminds a little of the question of how to decide who should marry whom.

A scientist’s work is determined by two things: his interests and those of his time. Everything has led to this.

In science, it is not speed that is the most important. It is the dedication, the commitment, the interest and the will to know something and to understand it — these are the things that come first.

Even a single missed crucial consideration could vitiate our most valiant efforts or render them as actively harmful as those of a soldier who is fighting on the wrong side. The search for crucial considerations (which must explore normative as well as descriptive issues) will often require crisscrossing the boundaries between different academic disciplines and other fields of knowledge. As there is no established methodology for how to go about this kind of research, difficult original thinking is necessary.

What counts in science is the importance of the discovery. What matters in literature is the originality and power of the metaphor.

Research is very important.

What characterises anthropological research today more than anything is the recognition of complexity; the world is complex, cultures are complex, communities are complex, and analytical strategies must acknowledge complexity.

These awards reflect the times, and nowadays hopefully recognise how important science has been, and continues to be, not only in understanding what's changing but also how we can respond to those changes,

Places matter. Their rules, their scale, their design include or exclude civil society, pedestrianism, equality, diversity (economic and otherwise), understanding of where water comes from and garbage goes, consumption or conservation. They map our lives.