“We live in a world where not everyone has the urge to help others. It is OK to encourage others to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, but if you do, just remember that some people have no boots.”

If you’re really successful at bullshitting, it means you’re not hanging around enough people smarter than you.

Imagine a world in which we are all enlightened by objective truths rather than offended by them.

In the end, it’s the people who are curious who change the world.

To learn more about science, turn off your electronic device and go outside and look around a bit. Nature is calling you. Go on. The internet will still be here.

You don’t want to raise a kid in a culture where the kid who asks the most questions is annoying. You want a culture where the kid who asks the most questions gets awards and gets another piece of cake.

So maybe part of our formal education should be training in empathy. Imagine how different the world would be if, in fact, that were ‘reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy.’

You can’t have people making decisions about the future of the world who are scientifically illiterate. That’s a recipe for disaster. And I don’t mean just whether a politician is scientifically literate, but people who vote politicians into office.

Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance.

The theory of evolution, like the theory of gravity, is a scientific fact.

Science literacy is the artery through which the solutions of tomorrow’s problems flow.

Today, scientists sound the alarm on other environmental dangers. Vested interests still hire their own scientists to confuse the issue. But in the end, nature, will not be fooled.

No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don’t ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives.

Aliens might be surprised to learn that in a cosmos with limitless starlight, humans kill for energy sources buried in the sand.

I know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge.

As they are currently practiced, there is no common ground between science and religion… Although just as in hostage negotiations, it’s probably best to keep both sides talking to each other.

One thing in life is for certain, the more profoundly baffled you have been in your life, the more open your mind becomes to new ideas.

And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.

You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation…and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.

Nothing is more beautiful than a smile that has struggled through tears.

The pessimist borrows trouble; the optimists lend encouragement.

A pinch of praise is worth a pound of scorn. A dash of encouragement is more helpful than a dipper of pessimism. A cup of kindness is better than a cupboard of criticism.

Encourage me, and I will not forget you.

Nine tenths of education is encouragement.

Greatly he failed, but he had greatly dared.