In the beginning, there were no reasons; there were only causes. Nothing had a purpose, nothing has so much as a function; there was no teleology in the world at all.

What you can imagine depends on what you know.

A scholar is just a library's way of making another library.

Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.

An inert historical fact is any fact about a perfectly ordinary arrangement of matter in the world at some point in the past that is no longer discernible, a fact that has left no footprints at all in the world today.

There are no forces on this planet more dangerous to all of us than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism.

I don't think the 9/11 attacks taught us anything we didn't already know about religion. It has long been obvious - even to the deeply religious - that religious fanaticism is an extremely dangerous deranger of otherwise sane and goodhearted people.