“Tax dollars intended for science education must not be used to teach creationism as any sort of real explanation of nature, because any observation or process of inference about our origin and the nature of the universe disproves creationism in every respect.”

The most serious problem facing humankind is climate change. All of these people breathing and burning our atmosphere has led to an extraordinarily dangerous situation.

It fills me with joy to know that we can pursue these answers. It is an astonishing thing that we are — you and I are one of the ways the universe knows itself.

Unlike science, creationism cannot predict anything, and it cannot provide satisfactory answers about the past.

People get a lot out of being religious. They have strong senses of community and mutual support. So, what’s not to love [there]?

Think how fortunate we are to know this much. But think also of all that’s yet to be discovered. Here’s hoping the deep answers to the deep questions-from the nature of consciousness to the origin of life-will be found in not too much more time.

Apparently there is redundancy in memory: You store the same memory in different parts of your brain for accessing at different speeds. That speed would depend on the frequency of use and the importance of the knowledge.

There’s nothing I believe in more strongly than getting young people interested in science and engineering, for a better tomorrow, for all humankind.

Religion is a completely different thing from the claim that the Earth is six thousand years old. That’s just crazy.

Speaking of human computers, there is a guy named Art Benjamin, he’s a human calculator. He says it’s a skill he learned as a kid. Now he’s a math professor at Harvey Mudd. He can find the square root of a six digit number in a few seconds. Practice.

I abandoned my religious teachings after I read the Bible twice – cover to cover. It took me a couple of years.

If the Earth gets hit by an asteroid, it’s game over. It’s control-alt-delete for civilization.

The natural world is a package deal; you don’t get to select which facts you like and which you don’t.

I tell personal stories associated with aspects of the theory, and I hope they are interesting and compelling. I don’t feel you’re going to change a grownup’s mind in one reading. People have to be exposed to scientific ideas over and over again for years. It’s also not a textbook.

Bicycling is a big part of the future. It has to be. There’s something wrong with a society that drives a car to work out in a gym.

For me, the meaning of life is pretty clear: Living things strive to pass their genes into the future.

The debate [in Undeniable] was nominally about creationism as a “viable” explanation for what we observe around us. For my side, the debate went very well; I’m not sure what I would change, although I can imagine shortening my answers during the rebuttals, perhaps.

I think there’s been a decline in the public’s access to what’s being done with their tax dollars, what’s being done in their name. I hope that that will be repaired.

Money always changes the game, when you let a dollar come between you and your friends, your cohorts.

Kind words cost you nothing but are sometimes worth more than a million dollars.

People say, “Do you know how much a million dollars is?” I don’t have a clue. How many Big Macs will it buy me?

I would never condone the burning of a Dan Brown novel, much though I loathe and detest his work. Well, I say work, you know, words, randomly arranged to form millions of dollars… I’m not bitter at all.

Then will come the billion-dollar awards, by enraged juries, to the children and their families. I can’t wait.

The galleries are simply corporations in the art world – “Here’s a million dollars for this latest piece of crap” – but I’m not about to go along with the gallery system.

During the campaign for re-election, Barack Obama at least made vague references to a willingness to accept $3 trillion of reduced spending in exchange for a $1 trillion dollar tax increase.