Knowing "why" (an idea) is more important than learning "what" (the fact).

Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles.

Science moves with the spirit of an adventure characterized both by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, would be simple as well as pretty.

It's necessary to be slightly underemployed if you are to do something significant.

No one may have the guts to say this, but if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we?

We're not all equal, it's simply not true. That isn't science.

Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them.

Our goal should be to understand our differences.

The way to do great science is to stay away from subjects that are overpopulated, and go to the frontiers.

Never be the brightest person in the room.

At lunch Francis [Crick] winged into the Eagle to tell everyone within hearing distance that we had found the secret of life.

Language has an ideological agenda that is apt to be hidden from view.

Democrats have a long history of utilizing the threat of a potential Ebola outbreak to request massive federal funds while attacking Republicans for expressing skepticism over their funding schemes.

..When I first heard Elvis' voice, I knew that I wasn't going to work for anybody ... hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail

In chess there is a world of intellectual values.

Thank God I have done my duty.

I don't worry about people misinterpreting my kindness for weakness.

Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, 'One tear, right now,' that one tear would pop out.

Everyday I think about dying About disease, starvation, violence, terrorism, war, the end of the world. It helps keep my mind off things.

Your body Hurts me as the world hurts God

I been through living for years. I just ain't dead yet.