In the 1820s, the U.S., Japan, and the U.K. were some of the only countries where the average population received at least two years of formal schooling.

At the turn of the 20th century, the disparity in literacy here in the U.S. largely came down to race. Nearly half of minorities at that time - 45 percent - were illiterate, while 94 percent of white citizens were literate.

I think about the Internet and cell phones and jets and spaceships, and I wonder, 'What's going to make that look ancient?'

Remember when vacation photos meant toting along a bulky camera?

Nothing gets us down more than watching violence on television or reading about war and brutality in the newspaper. The truth is, there's a massive reduction in the amount of violence around the world.

I get demoralized by organizations that start off with a mission and pull back when they find it's risky.

In the 1940s, about 20% of people in the U.S. had graduated from high school, but less than 5% continued their education to get bachelors' degrees or higher.

Many have built their careers buttressing the status quo, reinforcing what they've already accomplished, and resisting the radical thinking that can topple their legacy - not exactly the attitude you want when trying to drive innovation forward.

If the idea is really new and unique and big, other people will all think it is bad and is going to fail.

Large companies and government agencies have a lot to protect and therefore are not willing to take big risks. A large company taking a risk can threaten its stock price. A government agency taking a risk can threaten congressional investigation.

I've stopped watching TV news. They couldn't pay me enough money.

I think that we're living in a time where there are trillion-dollar opportunities that never existed before.

3D printing will massively reduce the cost of certain products as the cost of labor is removed.

I founded a launch company called International Microspace when I graduated medical school in 1989. We were trying to build a microsatellite launcher.

Now the amygdala is our early warning detector, our danger detector. It sorts and scours through all of the information looking for anything in the environment that might harm us. So given a dozen news stories, we will preferentially look at the negative news.

My childhood dreams were focused on being part of the effort to make humanity a multiplanetary species.

In 1980, during my sophomore year at MIT, I realized that the school didn't have a student space organization. I made posters for a group I called Students for the Exploration and Development of Space and put them up all over campus. Thirty-five people showed up. It was the first thing I ever organized, and it took off!

I don't think the space station is innovative. Going to the moon was innovative because we had no idea how to do it.

Companies have too many experts who block innovation. True innovation really comes from perpendicular thinking.

As you may know, I'm the co-founder and co-chairman of an asteroid company called Planetary Resources that is backed by a group of eight billionaires to implement the bold mission of extracting resources from near-Earth asteroids.

Back in 2007, I had the opportunity to meet Professor Stephen Hawking through the X PRIZE Foundation. In my first conversation with him I learned that he was passionate about flying into space someday.

As lower-cost phones begin to penetrate, they'll become the educator and physician everywhere on the planet.

Eight billion people will have Internet access by 2020.

I have the general philosophy of creating the future you want to see.

If you give people unlimited time and money, they'll do things the same old way. But if they have to achieve the goal in a brief time, they'll either give up or try something new.

You might hear people decry the loss of privacy in today's world, but radical transparency is dramatically reducing violence everywhere. Most violent things happen in the dark when no one's watching, whether it's an oppressive dictator or someone causing violence in the inner city.

I never was a big comic book fan. Obviously I'd heard them growing up from my friends who did read them, but I never was a big comic book reader.

I'm on 'Game Of Thrones,' and every time we have someone new coming on our show, we welcome them with open arms and get revitalised by this new presence. Then we kill them off very quickly.

I was born in 1969, believe it or not, so I was a child in the '70s.

Any swagger is just defense. When you're reminded so much of who you are by people - not a fame thing, but with my size, constantly, growing up - you just either curl up in a corner in the dark or you wear it proudly, like armor or something. You can turn it on its head and use it yourself before anybody else gets a chance.

Writing is getting killed by too many chefs. Back in the Bogart days, it started with great scripts. You had a writer, and he wrote a script, and that was your movie. I think that's been watered down a bit lately.

I think 'No' is a very powerful word in our business that is very hard to use early on in your career. But I also think I was pretty arrogant when I was younger... I used that word maybe too much, but it did help me with finding roles that I did like.

I've been to Sundance before, but I'd never seen a lot of screenings.

A lot of parts written for people of my size, dwarfs, are either foolish idiots or, like, these sages that are all-knowing, and they're very, sort of, come-to-them-for-answers.

I have a big cynical side to me.

I've felt like an outsider. I've had to struggle.

I don't like people being cautious and tentative and choosing their words carefully around me because I'm a dwarf.

Jen Lawrence is quite a fan of 'Game of Thrones.'

We're not environmentally doing very good things to this planet, and we might not be around too long.

We, as Americans, at least - I mean, I love my country - but we're so self-righteous sometimes, in terms of, like, our nationality, our country. But we're people from somewhere else; the true 'Americans' are the original peoples. It's funny, but we're a very territorial species.

There's a thing at the Museum of Natural History in New York, where I live: they have a stairwell where you follow the beginning and the course of this planet, and it's a very long stairwell, and you follow, and you follow, and then you reach the top, and we're, like, half a step on the stairwell - the timeline for us on this planet.

It was hard doing scenes with Bobby Cannavale because I would break up laughing because he's so funny.

I think more money can be very detrimental to movies and TV because things get solved economically rather than creatively, and that's never a good solution.

I think with a lot of filmmakers, their first film is their best film because they had to think on their feet and solve problems with ingenuity.

With a lot of shows, what you'll see happen is they start off really well, and they're very original, but they become sort of a version of themselves. They stand outside the show... they become a cliche of the show they once were. That's the whole 'jumping the shark' thing.

I think everybody goes through changes, and the same should be said for fictional characters, especially ones that you follow on television.

People's personalities get tweaked at weddings.

Anybody who was in 'The Godfather' is a tough guy.

There are wars being fought! Who cares what I'm doing on a Saturday night? I'm not even a celebrity.

I'm recognized, let me put it that way.