“In another couple centuries I’m sure that worldview won’t even exist. There’s no evidence for it.”

Evolution is a theory, and it’s a theory that you can test. We’ve tested evolution in many ways. You can’t present good evidence that says evolution is not a fact.

I used to play ultimate Frisbee, and I just got a reputation for making popcorn at parties. I don’t mean to brag on myself, but I make the popcorn in the pot, and it comes out fine every time.

I feel that I’ve often pointed out that there are countless aspects of life and nature that scientists and scientific thinkers cannot explain.

Our goal in science is to discover universal laws of nature. If one’s faith requires one to abandon or ignore natural laws, well, that person is going to have trouble reconciling religion and science. Otherwise, there is no any conflict.

Science is the best thing humans beings have ever come up with. And if it isn’t, science will fix it.

Humor is everywhere in that there’s irony in just about anything a human does.

But as the cerebellum degrades with age, so does the quality of memories. The memories are there, but they’re not as good.

The world’s going to change climatically. We just want to control the change. We want to have a high quality of life for billions of people as we pass through this era.

The US Navy has several people on every ship that can navigate by the stars. They don’t fool with that.

I stand by my assertions that although you can know what happens to any individual species that you modify, you cannot be certain what will happen to the ecosystem.

NASA is an engine of innovation and inspiration as well as the world’s premier space exploration agency, and we are well served by politicians working to keep it that way, instead of turning it into a mere jobs program, or worse, cutting its budget.

Without an end to the burning of fossil fuels, coal especially, most of us will live shorter lives. I’m hopeful, but very, very concerned.

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.

My father was a very good Boy Scout. He was very skilled with knots, and he showed me how to tie a bow tie.

If you just take a single human and put him or her in the forest he or she might not do very well without some sort of education which he got or she got from some tribe.

When we see the shadow on our images, are we seeing the time 11 minutes ago on Mars? Or are we seeing the time on Mars as observed from Earth now? It’s like time travel problems in science fiction. When is now; when was then?

Throughout the centuries we have projected on to the wolf the qualities we most despise and fear in ourselves.

If you can’t laugh at yourself, you may be missing the colossal joke of the century.

Totalitarianism is feudalism in the twelfth century sense of the word.

The woods were peopled by the mysterious good folk. The Lords and Ladies of the last century walked with me along the overgrown paths, and picked the old fashioned flowers among the box and rose hedges of the garden.

The proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem underscores how stable mathematics is through the centuries – how mathematics is one of humanity’s long continuous conversations with itself.

The life story of the five main characters and the secondary characters around them allows Jonathan Franzen to present the full impetus and extent of the world picture of the West at the end of the 20th century.

…but in every century, and ever since England has been what it is, an Englishman has always felt somewhat ashamed of his own emotion and of his own sympathy.

[T]he obverse of facile emotion in the 14th century was a general insensitivity to the spectacle of pain and death.