If you lead a country like Britain a strong country a country which has taken a lead in world affairs in good times and in bad a country that is always reliable then you have to have a touch of iron about you.

The future is too interesting and dangerous to be entrusted to any predictable reliable agency. We need all the fallibility we can get. Most of all we need to preserve the absolute unpredictability and total improbability of our connected minds. That way we can keep open all the options as we have in the past.

Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.

The universal human laws - need love for the beloved fear hunger periodic exaltation the kindness that rises up naturally in the absence of hunger/fear/pain - are constant predictable reliable universal and are merely ornamented with the details of local culture.

Family traditions counter alienation and confusion. They help us define who we are they provide something steady reliable and safe in a confusing world.

Science we are repeatedly told is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion by contrast is based on faith. The term 'doubting Thomas' well illustrates the difference.

Evolution is unobservable. It's based on blind faith in a few dry bones and on unreliable dating systems in which the gullible trust. Kids should be allowed to make up their own minds about this issue and not be censored to 'one side is all we will let you hear.'

I've got a great team of engineers behind this race car. I've got a great bunch of mechanics that make it reliable. This car is developed to go out there and be better than the Reynard and I feel that it is.

Our combination of great research universities a pro-risk business culture deep pools of innovation-seeking equity capital and reliable business and contract law is unprecedented and unparalleled in the world.

Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures.