Science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries.

The great advances in science usually result from new tools rather than from new doctrines.

We should try to introduce our children to science today as a rebellion against poverty and ugliness and militarism and economic injustice.

The reason why new concepts in any branch of science are hard to grasp is always the same; contemporary scientists try to picture the new concept in terms of ideas which existed before.

The essential fact which emerges ... is that the three smallest and most active reservoirs ( of carbon in the global carbon cycle), the atmosphere, the plants and the soil, are all of roughly the same size. This means that large human disturbance of any one of these reservoirs will have large effects on all three. We cannot hope either to understand or to manage the carbon in the atmosphere unless we understand and manage the trees and the soil too.

I have the freedom to do what I want... bright people to talk to every day.

The important thing is that we now have the tools to sequence all kinds of animals and plants and microbes - as well as humans. It is not important that we didn't actually finish the human sequence yet.