Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.

The education of women is the best way to save the environment.

Let us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our wings.

Biological diversity is the key to the maintenance of the world as we know it... Eliminate one species, and another increases to take its place. Eliminate a great many species, and the local ecosystem starts to decay.

Ninety-nine percent of all species that ever lived are now extinct.

What we need is an electronic encyclopedia of life, with one page for each species. On each page is given everything known about that species.

Most people are surprised when they hear my somber figures: we know of 2 million species of plants, animals and microorganisms, and we can give them each a scientific name and a diagnostic description. We know, perhaps generously, more than just a little bit of the anatomy in no more than 10 percent. We have done thorough studies in fewer than one-tenth of 1 percent. And the total number of species on Earth is unknown to the nearest order of magnitude.