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We are afraid of the enormity of the possible.

Whenever we're afraid, it's because we don't know enough. If we understood enough, we would never be afraid.

We're frightened of what makes us different.

Our thinking and our behaviour are always in anticipation of a response. It is therefore fear-based.

People are afraid of detail and complexity.

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

When, as we must often do, we fear science, we really fear ourselves.

There can sometimes be this fear among laypeople: 'I don't understand everything in science perfectly, so I just can't say anything about it.' I think it's good to know that we scientists are also confused some of the time.

We can fear things into existence. Fear looks into the future and imagines the worst that can happen.

Because we have a society that by and large is illiterate in these areas - science, math and engineering - what we do is a mystery to them, and they find it scary. And because of that, it creates easy opportunities for opponents of development, activist organizations, to manufacture fear.