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.

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.

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.

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

Presidents aren't supposed to spit, at least not obviously.

Figuring out a way to use humor to deal with important issues I think is very important. Laughter is a great diffuser.

Puritanism, in whatever expression, is a poisonous germ. On the surface everything may look strong and vigorous; yet the poison works its way persistently, until the entire fabric is doomed.

Behind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum.

In Hollywood, she's revered, she gets nominated for Oscars, but I've never heard anyone in the public or among my friends say, 'Oh, I love Winona Ryder.'

In today's politics, it would be good to have politicians who are more upfront about what they felt and actually not trying to bend with every breeze. They're infuriating, all of them.

That's one of my biggest obstacles. I'm afraid of failure. I want to succeed so bad that I become afraid of failing.

Divorce is the one human tragedy that reduces everything to cash.

There’s no reason to hold yourself back and say you can’t do something in life unless you go for it and try to do it.

Things. Cosas. Things attach themselves like leeches to the human soul, then they bleed out the sweetness and the music and the primordial joy of being unencumbered upon the land.