Our concern for the future can be tested by how well we support our libraries.

My parents were not scientists. They knew almost nothing about science. But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.

An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions atheism is very stupid.

Maxwell's Equations have had a greater impact on human history than any ten presidents.

Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience promptly fills. If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience.

One of the great commandments of science is: 'Mistrust arguments from authority.'

I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.