Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others? That’s who we are! We’re not who we say we are, we’re not who we want to be - we are the sum of the influence and impact that we have, in our lives, on others.

Except for children (who don't know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spendtime wondering why nature is the way it is . . .

I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder. It's a very powerful emotion. All children feel it. In a first grade classroom everybody feels it; in a twelfth grade classroom almost nobody feels it, or at least acknowledges it. Something happens between first and twelfth grade, and it's not just puberty. Not only do the schools and the media not teach much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense of wonder. Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling. Poor popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience.

There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths.

The passion to explore is at the heart of being human.

You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility.

Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.