The beginning of wisdom, as the Chinese say, is calling things by their right names.

I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.

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

Yes, the natural sciences are telling us a great deal about human origins, the origins of our species the origins of our minds; we're on our way to explaining a large part of it. I'll accept an answer provided only by such means as obtaining and exploring, analyzing and arguing over the evidence - not because of a scribe's myopic view of the subject written 500 years before the birth of Christ!

The cost of scientific advance is the humbling recognition that reality was not constructed to be easily grasped by the human mind. This is the cardinal tenet of scientific understanding. Our species and its ways of thinking are a product of evolution, not the purpose of evolution.

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

The two major challenges for the 21st century are to improve the economic situation of the majority and save as much of the planet as we can.