“You know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? – Medicine.”

Isn’t this enough? Just this world? Just this beautiful, complex wonderfully unfathomable world?

Throughout history, every mystery ever solved has turned out to be NOT magic.

There are children in Africa, starving to death, and you don’t hear them whinging.

Science adjusts its views based on what’s observed.

To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are.

Define yourself by what you love.

It’s an incredibly exciting thing, this one, meaningless life of yours.

We must think critically, and not just about the ideas of others. Be hard on your beliefs.

Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that the arts and sciences are at odds with one another. That is a recent, stupid and damaging idea.

Only a ginger, can call another ginger Ginger.

How does it so fail to hold our attention that we have to diminish it with the invention of cheap, man-made myths and monsters?

Science is not a body of knowledge nor a system of belief.

Be demonstrative and generous in your praise of those you admire.

I will judge you on how you treat the least powerful. So there.

Who’s the world going to revolve around now?

“Legacy code” often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling.

18th century scientists, the French in particular, seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available.

Teaching creationism in science class as an alternative to evolution is inappropriate.

I don’t really listen to a lot of 90s alternative indie female stuff anymore, but I loved Liz Phair and Kim Deal when I was younger.

Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.

I thought, well, why am I giving up on my primary dream to work doubly hard, to do something as an alternative to what it really still want to?

Why am I an atheist? The short answer is that I cannot accept any of the alternatives. I simply don’t find them believable.

One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.