“The essence of humanity’s spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and the empiricist world views?”

Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure.

People respect nonfiction but they read novels.

You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for you and strive to be the best, however hard the path.

I tend to believe that religious dogma is a consequence of evolution.

By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.

We should preserve every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity.

There doesn’t seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.

An individual ant, even though it has a brain about a millionth of a size of a human being’s, can learn a maze; the kind we use is a simple rat maze in a laboratory. They can learn it about one-half as fast as a rat.

Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.

True character arises from a deeper well than religion.

This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.

People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will find a way to keep ancestral spirits alive.

If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.

When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.

Our brain is mapping the world. Often that map is distorted, but it’s a map with constant immediate sensory input.

If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way.

I always hate it when I see the wrong person in massive roles, so for me, my biggest fear would be accepting a role I thought I wouldn’t find the rhythm of.

Now it is a funny thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. If you utterly decline to make do with what you can get, then somehow or other, you are very likely to get what you want.

If you want democracy, you have got to be prepared to accept the responsibilities of democracy.

It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

If only we can give them faith that mountains can be moved, they will accept the illusion that mountains are moveable, and thus an illusion may become reality.

If you acquit me, you will give me great pleasure. If you condemn me you will do me honour!

We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them.

In order to develop love – universal love, cosmic love, whatever you would like to call it one must accept the whole situation of life as it is, both the light and the dark, the good and the bad. One must open oneself to life, communicate with it.