The same few dozen organic molecules are used over and over again in biology for the widest variety of functions.

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.

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.

No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.

never forget this moment, the hum of the bee, the saffron threads of the flower, the drawn blinds, nature's assiduousness and human cruelty.

Everyone thinks I'm a hypochondriac. It makes me sick.

To eke out the most happiness from an experience, we must anticipate it, savor it as it unfolds, express happiness, and recall a happy memory.

Study detains the mind by the perpetual occurrence of something new, which may gratefully strike the imagination.

I'm very down-to-earth and accessible, I think.

I think there is a big group of people out there who disagree about what is going on. They want to have their privacy back, they want to have internet freedom.

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.

You are not the child of the people you call mother and father, but their fellow-adventurer on a bright journey to understand the things that are.