A potato can grow quite easily on a very small plot of land. With molecular manufacturing, we'll be able to have distributed manufacturing, which will permit manufacturing at the site using technologies that are low-cost and easily available.
- Ralph Merkle Quote

As in any technological revolution, there will be winners and losers. On balance, everyone will come out ahead, although there will be particular companies that will not be able to cope with a new environment.
- Ralph Merkle Quote

Because of technological limits, there is a certain amount of food that we can produce per acre. If we were to have intensive greenhouse agriculture, we could have much higher production.
- Ralph Merkle Quote

Disease and ill health are caused largely by damage at the molecular and cellular level, yet today's surgical tools are too large to deal with that kind of problem.
- Ralph Merkle Quote

Food is available, but it cannot be shipped into an area, so the people in that area suffer the consequences.
- Ralph Merkle Quote

If we can reduce the cost and improve the quality of medical technology through advances in nanotechnology, we can more widely address the medical conditions that are prevalent and reduce the level of human suffering.
- Ralph Merkle Quote

If you look at the human condition today, not everyone is well fed, has access to good medical care, or the physical basics that provide for a healthy and a happy life.
- Ralph Merkle Quote

If you look at the various strategies available for dealing with a new technology, sticking your head in the sand is not the most plausible strategy.
- Ralph Merkle Quote

It looks as though yields of over 10 times what we can currently grow per acre are feasible if you control the CO2 concentration, the humidity, the temperature, all the various factors that plants depend on to grow rapidly.
- Ralph Merkle Quote

Machines built by human beings they will function correctly if we provide them with a very specific environment. But if that environment is changed, they won't function at all.
- Ralph Merkle Quote

Many people in the world today are not starving because there is an inherent inability to produce food, they are starving because they are caught in the middle of political fights and blockades that have been used as weapons.
- Ralph Merkle Quote

Nanotechnology is an idea that most people simply didn't believe.
- Ralph Merkle Quote

Nanotechnology will let us build computers that are incredibly powerful. We'll have more power in the volume of a sugar cube than exists in the entire world today.
- Ralph Merkle Quote

One of the issues facing us today is that there are countries where there is a serious lack of resources, the standards of living are very low, and this creates a fundamental unease and discomfort in entire populations.
- Ralph Merkle Quote

The first approximation in this future that we're looking at is that everyone will be physically well off. They will have a great abundance in material goods, and I think that will soften some of the conflicts we see now.
- Ralph Merkle Quote

The laws of physics should allow us to arrange things molecule by molecule and even atom by atom, and at some point it was inevitable that we would develop a technology that would let us do this.
- Ralph Merkle Quote

The new technologies that we see coming will have major benefits that will greatly alleviate human suffering.
- Ralph Merkle Quote

Today we see a human population of over 6 billion people, many of whom have serious medical conditions, which either can't be treated or cannot be treated economically.
- Ralph Merkle Quote

We can grow crops less expensively because molecular manufacturing technology is inherently low cost.
- Ralph Merkle Quote