“We live in a world where not everyone has the urge to help others. It is OK to encourage others to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, but if you do, just remember that some people have no boots.”

Part of knowing how to think is knowing how the laws of nature shape the world around us. Without that knowledge, without that capacity to think, you can easily become a victim of people who seek to take advantage of you.

The greatest of people that have ever been in society, they were never versions of someone else. They were themselves.

The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.

I object to religion in science classrooms not because it’s religion but because it’s not science.

The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.

There is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance.

If factual information upsets you, then you are creating a world that is not embracing objective truths, and that’s not how you advance a democracy.

If each dead person became a ghost, there’d be more than 100 billion of them haunting us all. Creepy, but cool.

Math is the language of the universe. So the more equations you know, the more you can converse with the cosmos.

My goal is not to shove information into your head. It’s to find ways to reignite the curiosity that we all had as children for the natural world. You don’t have to tell a child to explore the backyard.

Knowing how to think empowers you far beyond those who know only what to think.

God displayed a sense of humor when he configured the region between our legs an entertainment complex built around a sewage system.

If we have the power to turn another planet into Earth, then we have the power to turn Earth back into Earth.

When a coincidence seems amazing, that’s because the human mind isn’t wired to naturally comprehend probability & statistics.

Science literacy is a vaccine against the charlatans of the world that would exploit your ignorance.

Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. You cannot build a program of discovery on the assumption that nobody is smart enough to figure out the answer to a problem.

The pessimist borrows trouble; the optimists lend encouragement.

A pinch of praise is worth a pound of scorn. A dash of encouragement is more helpful than a dipper of pessimism. A cup of kindness is better than a cupboard of criticism.

Encourage me, and I will not forget you.

Nine tenths of education is encouragement.

Greatly he failed, but he had greatly dared.

The spirited horse, which will try to win the race of its own accord, will run even faster if encouraged.

Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.

Instruction does much, but encouragement everything.