Ants are the leading removers of dead creatures on the land. And the rest of life is substantially dependent upon them.

Without the instruments and accumulated knowledge of the natural sciences... humans are trapped in a cognitive prison. They are like intelligent fish born in a deep shallowed pool. Wondering and restless, longing to reach out, they think about the world outside. They invent ingenious speculations and myths about the origin of the confining waters, of the sun and the sky and the stars above , and the meaning of their own existence. But they are wrong, always wrong because the world is too remote from ordinary experience to be merely imagined.

I think we will make it. Because one quality people have - certainly Americans have it - is that they can adapt when they see necessity staring them in the face. What to avoid is what someone once called the definition of hell: truth realized too late.

Only in the last moment in history has the delusion arisen that people can flourish apart from the rest of the living world.

[Bacteria are the] dark matter of the biological world [with 4 million mostly unknown species in a ton of soil].

I grew up as a Southern Baptist with strict adherence to the Bible, which I read as a youngster.

In the end ... success or failure will come down to an ethical decision, one on which those now living will be judged for generations to come.