Science that leads over the horizon depends on gathering the best minds and enabling them to do what the best minds naturally seek to do: pursue the most thrilling questions of the time.

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.

Investing in a startup does not make you an entrepreneur any more than buying a grand piano makes you a concert pianist.

Only that which does not teach which does not cry out which does not condescend which does not explain is irresistible.

Do each daily task the best we can act as though the eye of opportunity were always upon us.

To understand somebody else as a human being, I think, is about as close to real forgiveness as one can get.

She was a steady date until she put on some weight.

We don't just want what we want because we want it; we want what we want because that's what we've learned to want.

I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion.

One of my favorite things - and I am sure everybody else's in this Chamber - is to give away money. You really don't get much opposition when you give away money.

The Gift belongs to whoever chooses to accept it. It is enough to believe and not to be afraid to make a few mistakes.

It was great fun to do because of the central character. With The Girl in the Spider's Web, the girl is really the central character. She's the whole thing.