All science asks is to employ the same levels of skepticism we use in buying a used car or in judging the quality of analgesics or beer from their television commercials.

Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.

But I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble.

Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being.

It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have got it.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value the may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.

Liberation from superstition is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for science.

If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate. ... Choose science.

Fiona fixed a slice of bread to the toasting fork and held it out to the flames. So began the ritual. Hot butter melted off the slices of toast and dribbled onto their fingers.

There's a very simple reason why quality relationships are scarce: we live in a fallen world, and it sucks.

Whatever you do today you've got to sleep with tonight.

May every memory that you share Of dreams you've seen come true, Help make this special anniversary day A happy one, for the two of you

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.

They have also been adopting fuel efficiency standards for automobiles in China.

The long term versus the short term argument is one used by losers.

In an age of acceleration, nothing can be more exhilarating than going slow.

I'm a 50 year-old guy and I'm not in shape like I was when I was 30.

An aspiration is a joy forever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity.