The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit.

When you buy a used car, you kick the tires, you look at the odometer, you open up the hood. If you do not feel yourself an expert in automobile engines, you bring a friend who is. And you do this with something as unimportant as an automobile. But on the issues of the transcendent, of ethics, of morals, of the origins of the world, of the nature of human beings, on those issues should we not insist upon at least equally skeptical scrutiny?

The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood

Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism.

Every cell is a triumph of natural selection, and we’re made of trillions of cells. Within us, is a little universe.

Few scientists now dispute that today's soaring levels of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere will cause global temperature averages to rise by as much as nine degrees Fahrenheit sometime after the year 2000.

Any sufficiently crisp question can be answered by a single binary digit-0 or 1, yes or no.