We don't know nearly enough about the complexities of Nature. If we think we can eliminate natural ecosystems and substitute prosthetic devices, i.e. clean air or water with fusion energy - we are kidding ourselves.

Hands-on experience at the critical time, not systematic knowledge, is what counts in the making of a naturalist. Better to be an untutored savage for a while, not to know the names or anatomical detail. Better to spend stretches of time just searching and dreaming.

If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months.

From the freedom to explore comes the joy of learning. From knowledge acquired by personal initiative arises the desire for more knowledge. And from mastery of the novel and beautiful world awaiting every child comes self-confidence.

A paradigm shift is the best a scientist can hope for. Whenever I smell an opportunity like that, I go after it. You have a new discovery that something's working in a different way than you thought. And this is particularly true in molecular and cell biology, which is structural biology and has the least potential for controversy and partisanship among the biological scientists. You're dealing with a concrete object that's either there or not there.

The paradox is that, by children taking shortcuts through computer games, through fantasies, through movies that load on all the emotional stimulation of encountering life in a stylized way - all of this is the equivalent of mainlining of paleolithic emotions, emotions about combat, about personal success, about overcoming monsters, about making powerful friendships, about winning wars and entering new territory.

Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the 'environmentalist' view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.