The suggestion that petroleum might have arisen from some transformation of squashed fish or biological detritus is surely the silliest notion to have been entertained by substantial numbers of persons over an extended period of time.

It is ironic that the scientific facts throw Darwin out, but leave William Paley, a figure of fun to the scientific world for more than a century, still in the tournament with a chance of being the ultimate winner... Indeed, such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological rather than scientific.

Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance.

Once I had learnt my twelve times table (at the age of three) it was downhill all the way.

Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics, on which life depends, are in every respect deliberate.... It is, therefore, almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect higher intelligence -even to the limit of God.

There are many ways of knocking electrons out of atoms. The simplest is to rub two surfaces together.

The suggestion that petroleum might have arisen from some transformation of squashed fish or biological detritus is surely the silliest notion to have been entertained by substantial numbers of persons over an extended period of time.