So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular, scientific view of the world.

[T]he true natural sciences lock together in theory and evidence to form the ineradicable technical base of modern civilization. The pseudosciences satisfy personal psychological needs... but lack the ideas or the means to contribute to the technical base.

Human nature is deeper and broader than the artificial contrivance of any existing culture.

We don't need to clear the 4 to 6 percent of the Earth's surface remaining in tropical rain forests, with most of the animal and plant species living there.

It's the technique, I think, of writing a novel that is difficult for a nonfiction writer.

Science and technology are what we can do; morality is what we agree we should or should not do.

Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.