“You can’t have people making decisions about the future of the world who are scientifically illiterate. That’s a recipe for disaster. And I don’t mean just whether a politician is scientifically literate, but people who vote politicians into office.”

When we try to look farther into the universe we come to what appears to be the end of space but actually it’s the beginning of time.

Knowledge of the natural world and how it works should be counted as fundamental to informed governance. You can’t have a functioning democracy, if the electorate is under-informed or, worse, mis-informed.

There’s a saying in the scientific community, that every great truth goes through three phases. First, people deny it. Second, they say that it conflicts with the Bible. Third, they say that they’ve known it all along.

To be scientifically literate is to empower yourself to know when someone else is full of bullshit.

It’s better to understand something than to memorize something.

I wonder if, in fact, we have been observed by aliens and upon close examination of human conduct and human behavior they have concluded that there is no sign of intelligent life on Earth.

I think the best thing a parent can do, when raising a child, is simply get out of their way.

Everyone should have their mind blown once a day.

After 50 years of television, there’s no other conclusion the aliens could draw, but that most humans are neurotic, death-hungry, dysfunctional idiots.

Practically every food you buy in a store for consumption by humans is genetically modified food. There are no wild, seedless watermelons. There’s no wild cows.

When scientifically investigating the natural world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier.

We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the universe is in us.

We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically.

If you’re really successful at bullshitting, it means you’re not hanging around enough people smarter than you.

Imagine a world in which we are all enlightened by objective truths rather than offended by them.

In the end, it’s the people who are curious who change the world.

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

What you have in most education software is that they’re catering to the decision-maker who makes the budget allocations, and that decision-maker has a lot of check boxes. Does it do this? Check. Does it do that? Check. They could care less about the end user experience.

There’s a big difference between a decisive manager and a tyrant.

I strive never to forget the real world consequences of my decisions on individuals, businesses and government.

In our society, marriage is not simply a governmental institution; it is a religious institution as well, today’s decision might change the former, but it cannot change the latter.

The highway of life is filled with flat squirrels that couldn’t make a decision.

We are now at the point where we must decide whether we are to honour the concept of a plural society which gains strength through diversity, or whether we are to have bitter fragmentation that will result in perpetual tension and strife.

I’m never certain of a performance – my own or the other actors’ – or the script or anything. But to me it seems there’s only one place in the world the camera can be, and the decision usually comes immediately.