My heroes were never scientists. They were Graham Greene and Christopher Isherwood, you know, good writers.

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.

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

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.

I've never discussed my writing with others much, but I don't believe it can do any harm. I don't think that there's any risk that ideas or materials will evaporate.

Necessity knows no rules.

We use religion like a trolley-car--we ride on it only while it is going our way.

I haven't got anything against films that are about the minutia of relationships or customs, but I love extremes.

I am skilled now, at casting iron To make a hardened bed for my heavy world

The best fights are the ones you don't have", a wise man once said to me.

When I speak out on corporations hurting the common man or the environment or other species, I expect a well-financed disinformation campaign to be aimed my way.

it isn't good tactics to ask for something that you know will be refused.

One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns that he must die ...and accepts his sentence undismayed.

When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite.