“People think of education as something that they can finish.”

The first law of dietetics seems to be: if it tastes good, it’s bad for you.

There seems to be a feeling that anything that is natural is good. Strychnine is natural.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny.’

The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

There is an art to science, and a science in art; the two are not enemies, but different aspects of the whole.

Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket.

I don’t believe in an afterlife, so I don’t have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.

And above all things, never think that you’re not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it.

To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.

Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is. The only function of a school is to make self-education easier; failing that, it does nothing.

It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.

This time will sadly defeat many people. Don’t let it defeat you.

When one does not have what one wants, one must want what one has.

Everybody’s blind when the view’s amazing.

We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain.

Of course it’s possible to love a human being if you don’t know them too well.

Our sins are more easily remembered than our good deeds.

Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared.

We all have our own insecurities.