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

The great challenge of the twenty-first century is to raise people everywhere to a decent standard of living while preserving as much of the rest of life as possible.

On the lawn next to the sidewalk a fire ant colony is swarming. The ants are pouring out of a mound nest, here no more than an irregular pile of dirt partly flattened by the last pass of a lawnmower. Winged queens and males are taking off on their nuptial flight, protected by angry-looking workers that run up and down the grass blades and out onto the blistering-hot concrete of the sidewalk. The species is unmistakably Solenopsis geminata, the native fire ant.

The variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds, or is likely to exceed, that in all of the rest of life combined.

I think that's my nature, to want to bring people together rather than to try to bombard them into agreement.

Overall, the human brain is the most complex object known in the universe - known, that is, to itself.

We've got paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technologies.