In the end ... success or failure will come down to an ethical decision, one on which those now living will be judged for generations to come.

The students of biodiversity, the ones we most need in science today, have an enormous task ahead of molecular biology and the medical scientists. Studying model species is a great idea, but we need to combine that with biodiversity studies and have those properly supported because of the contribution they can make to conservation biology, to agrobiology, to the attainment of a sustainable world.

All three of the Abrahamic religions were born and nurtured in arid, disturbed environments.

Religious beliefs evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength.

That is the great mystery of human evolution: how to account for calculus and Mozart.

No barrier stands between the material world of science and the sensibilities of the hunter and the poet.

People must belong to a tribe; they yearn to have a purpose larger than themselves. We are obligated by the deepest drives of the human spirit to make ourselves more than animated dust, and we must have a story to tell about where we came from, and why we are here.