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

The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.

There is no better high than discovery.

Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.

The variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds, or is likely to exceed, that in all of the rest of life combined.

Ants make up two-thirds of the biomass of all the insects. There are millions of species of organisms and we know almost nothing about them.

Ants are the leading removers of dead creatures on the land. And the rest of life is substantially dependent upon them.

Ideas emerge when a part of the real or imagined world is studied for its own sake.

If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago.

Religious beliefs evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength.

We ought to recognize that religious strife is not the consequence of differences among people. It’s about conflicts between creation stories.

Jehovah had nothing to say to Moses and the others about the care of the planet. He had plenty to say about tribal loyalty and conquest.

Religious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we’re hard-wired to form tribalistic religions.

The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.

I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.

One thing I did was grow up as an ardent naturalist. I never grew out of my bug period.

We have decommissioned natural selection and must now look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.

I’m so old, I don’t buy green bananas any more.

I don’t think there are any rules in real face-to-face relationships or interactions.

On this foundation it is possible to accomplish any task whatsoever.

More than any other poet, Whitman is what we make him; more than any other poet, his greatest value is in what he suggests and implies rather than in what he portrays, and more than any other poet must he wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of himself.

You’ll never have any trouble with Mr. T, I’m just a big, calm teddy bear kind of guy. Mr. T ain’t ashamed to cry.

We’re not thinking about any kind of power. We’re not thinking about any kind of struggles. We’re not thinking about revolution or war or any of that. That’s not what we want.

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.

What concerns this dress is a small thing – less than nothing. I did not take it by the advice of any man in the world.