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

The education of women is the best way to save the environment.

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.

Every kid has a bug period… I never grew out of mine.

If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.

It’s always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That’s just in human relationships.

Well, let me tell you, ants are the dominant insects. They make up as much as a quarter of the biomass of all insects in the world. They are the principal predators. They’re the cemetery workers.

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

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?

Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.

In 2010, my two Harvard mathematician colleagues and I dismantled kin-selection theory, which was the reigning theory of the origin of altruism at the time.

Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds… is not productive.

Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.

Of course, there is no reconciliation between the theory of evolution by natural selection and the traditional religious view of the origin of the human mind.

Ants have the most complicated social organization on earth next to humans.

The world depends on fungi, because they are major players in the cycling of materials and energy around the world.

Companies that are willing to share, to withhold in order to further the growth of the company.

The minotaur more than justifies the existence of the labyrinth.

And, unfortunately, the cruelty and killing are often justified through a distorted interpretation of religion

We go after the terrorists and those who support them and those who justify their actions.

When we’re not defending and justifying, and we’re being very still, our answers can and do shock us.

There are times when the end justifies the means. But when you build an argument based on a whole series of such times, you may find that you’ve constructed an entire philosophy of evil.” –Luke Skywalker

Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.

In America, you’re allowed to justify almost any kind of bigotry, sexism, or intolerance if you source it to God’s big book of bad ideas.

When you start defending someone by justifying their actions; you’re too attached.