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.

The love of complexity without reductionism makes art; the love of complexity with reductionism makes science.

The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and works like a bookkeeper

Not all ants use violence to dominate their world, some use more subtle methods.

We use pandas and eagles and things. I'd love to see a wilderness society with an angry-looking wolverine as their logo.

In 2010, my two Harvard mathematician colleagues and I dismantled kin-selection theory, which was the reigning theory of the origin of altruism at the time.

It often occurs to me that if, against all odds, there is a judgmental God and heaven, it will come to pass that when the pearly gates open, those who had the valor to think for themselves will be escorted to the head of the line, garlanded, and given their own personal audience.