[W]hen the martyr's righteous forebrain is exploded by the executioner's bullet and his mind disintegrates, what then? Can we safely assume that all those millions of neural circuits will be reconstituted in an immaterial state, so the conscious mind carries on?

In a purely technical sense, each species of higher organism-beetle, moss, and so forth, is richer in information than a Caravaggio painting, Mozart symphony, or any other great work of art.

Biophilia: the innate pleasure from living abundance and diversity as manifested by the human impulse to imitate Nature with gardens.

There can be no purpose more enspiriting than to begin the age of restoration, reweaving the wondrous diversity of life that still surrounds us.

Adults forget the depths of languor into which the adolescent mind decends with ease. They are prone to undervalue the mental growth that occurs during daydreaming and aimless wandering

Far more important throughout the rest of science is the ability to form concepts, during which the researcher conjures images and processes by intuition.

Every ecosystem, even a small one, is sustainable because it has certain ensembles and conditions and influences that are unique to it. And the biological ensembles are almost certainly, even the most modest ones, in the thousands of species. We don't know what's involved in the models - not even the beginnings. And yet we're trying to make a sustainable world, which has to include the natural world. The human species is triumphant, but it's got to get a grip. It's got to come to understand what's happened, why we're this way and what we're doing.