Techno-humanism aims to amplify the power of humans, creating cyborgs and connecting humans to computers, but it still sees human interests and desires as the highest authority in the universe.

People already have bionic arms and legs that work by the power of thought. And we increasingly outsource mental and communicative activities to computers. We are merging with our smartphones. Very soon, they will just be part of the body.

Every day, I absorb countless data bits through emails, phone calls, and articles; process the data; and transmit back new bits through more emails, phone calls, and articles. I don't really know where I fit into the great scheme of things and how my bits of data connect with the bits produced by billions of other humans and computers.

Those who refuse to liberalise and globalise are doomed to failure.

Money is the probably the most successful story ever told. It has no objective value... but then you have these master storytellers: the big bankers, the finance ministers... and they come, and they tell a very convincing story.

Homo sapiens is a social being, and our well-being depends to a large extent on the quality and depth of our social and family relations - and in the last 200 years, they have been disintegrating.

If you don't like the word 'religion,' you can replace it with 'ideology' - it's largely the same thing. At the heart of both religion and ideology is the question of authority and where authority is coming from.

About 15,000 years ago, humans colonised America, wiping out in the process about 75% of its large mammals. Numerous other species disappeared from Africa, from Eurasia, and from the myriad islands around their coasts. The archaeological record of country after country tells the same sad story.

You take fantasies, which for thousands of years belonged to the religious realm - overcoming death or our merging with the universe - and you suddenly start talking about them in a more technical perspective as something that can be achieved, not after you die with the help of supernatural beings, but in this very life with the help of technology.

Intelligence is the ability to solve problems, and consciousness is the ability to feel things and have subjective experiences.

Intelligence is the ability to solve problems, whereas consciousness is the ability to feel things such as pain, joy, love, and anger. Throughout history, intelligence always went hand in hand with consciousness.

As beavers build dams and bees build hives, human beings have spears. Or take the high intelligence of human beings, the ability to make plans, to transmit information - that was also there before, but that, together with the tools, was not enough to make man special.

The notion of superhumans is using bioengineering and artificial intelligence to upgrade human abilities. If they use the power to change themselves, to change their own minds, their own desires, then we have no idea what they will want to do.

What's more valuable - intelligence or consciousness?

Since the beginning of the computer age, there has been immense development in computer intelligence but exactly zero development in computer consciousness.

For thousands of years, we have gained the power to control the world outside us but not to control the world inside. You could stop a river from flowing, but you could not stop your body from becoming old. You could kill mosquitoes, but you could not kill annoying thoughts buzzing inside your head.

For many centuries, even thousands of years, patriotism worked quite well. Of course, it led to wars an so forth, but we shouldn't focus too much on the bad.

We are living in a global world - but most schools and books still tell us only parochial histories of one particular country or culture. The truth is that there are no longer any independent countries in the world.

Traditionally, life has been divided into two main parts: a period of learning followed by a period of working. Very soon, this traditional model will become utterly obsolete, and the only way for humans to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives and to reinvent themselves repeatedly.

Censorship no longer works by hiding information from you; censorship works by flooding you with immense amounts of misinformation, of irrelevant information, of funny cat videos, until you're just unable to focus.

There is a saying that if you get something for free, you should know that you're the product. It was never more true than in the case of Facebook and Gmail and YouTube. You get free social-media services, and you get free funny cat videos. In exchange, you give up the most valuable asset you have, which is your personal data.

In Judaism or Christianity and so forth, you invent rules that don't exist anywhere except in your imagination. You spend your life trying to gain points and to avoid all kinds of things that detract from your points. And if by the time you die you gather enough points, then you pass on to the next level, in Heaven.

Dollar bills have absolutely no value except in our collective imagination, but everybody believes in the dollar bill.

The fact that millennials are fast at communication and expect transparency and don't feel comfortable with hierarchy gets interpreted as us being impatient or entitled. These traits are perfectly normal given that we're the first digital natives.

As an entrepreneur, the latitude of failure and of success is directly correlated to people. I am growing more and more attentive to my first instincts, even if I can't justify them, as they apply to people.

As a tech optimist, I believe productivity woes can be solved through cleverly imagined and implemented technology.

What matters about people is their magnetic leadership, their aptitude for helping those following in their footsteps, and their passion - how they choose to package that is their prerogative.

Your style can be an artistic part of your personal leadership journey.

If you're not certain about something, it might mean you should reach out to a person you trust for advice.

When you experience difficulty at work or in your life, instead of looking back on it as something that was really challenging, look at it and ask yourself, 'What wisdom did I learn from that?'

My first college internship was at Sony Pictures Entertainment in Los Angeles. My second internship was at McKinsey & Company as a consultant - that turned into my first job after graduation.

After graduation, I discovered that I'd hit the limit of what I could learn from the women in my family. On top of that, in the workforce, all of the things that mattered in college suddenly weren't enough.

A smile and good energy. They will take you farther than any material possession.

Semiotics is a general theory of all existing languages... all forms of communication - visual, tactile, and so on... There is general semiotics, which is a philosophical approach to this field, and then there are many specific semiotics.

Beauty is boring because it is predictable.

Berlusconi is a genius in communication. Otherwise, he would never have become so rich.

Translation is the art of failure.

Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.

Religion has nothing to do with God. It's a fundamental attitude of human beings, who ask about the origins of life and what happens after death. For many, the answer is a personal god. In my opinion, it's religion that produces God, not the other way round.

It is psychologically very hard to go through life without the justification, and the hope, provided by religion.

Musical compositions can be very sad - Chopin - but you have the pleasure of this sadness. The cheap consolation is: you will be happy. The higher consolation is the pleasure and recognition of your unhappiness, the pleasure of having recognised that fate, destiny and life are such as they are and so you reach a higher form of consciousness.

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.

A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.

When someone has to intervene to defend the liberty of the press, that society is sick.

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.

When the poet is in love, he is incapable of writing poetry on love. He has to write when he remembers that he was in love.

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

Our life is full of empty space.

The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.

Sometimes you say things with a smile with the precise intention of making it clear that you are not being serious, and are only kidding. If I salute a friend with a smile and say, 'How are you, you old scoundrel!' clearly I don't really mean he's a scoundrel.