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

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.

In many environments, take away the ants and there would be partial collapses in many of the land ecosystems.

If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months.

Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?

Willing to try to get a better atmosphere through a demonstration of democratic principles, fairness and cooperation, a better product, those will win in the end.

Persist! The world needs all you can give.

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.

I never really read Allen Ginsberg poetry, even though I have a book he gave me.

It is so inspiring when you come across a woman who is very strong and dedicated and is amazing at what they do. That’s how I feel about Meryl Streep.

If people can write to each other across space, why can they not write across time too?

One of the most powerful sayings I have come across is by Imam ash-Shafi’I, “My heart is at ease knowing that what was meant for me will never miss me, and that what misses me was never meant for me.”

To write as if your life depended on it; to write across the chalkboard, putting up there in public the words you have dredged; sieved up in dreams, from behind screen memories, out of silence– words you have dreaded and needed in order to know you exist.

As I go across the country and privately visit women’s shelters and counselling centres.

These objects were sometimes just 12 inches across yet needed enough detail to fill a movie screen.

You taste something from St. George, even across categories – the gin, the whisky – it tastes like something from St. George. It’s the same as going to a great bar: