When we look back on this time and we are going to see what the Internet brought us, and social media brought us, I think people are going to say 'how did people know anything in those years, during that particular time in history?' Because there is so much disorganization in the information.

I believe in strong legislation for the environment. So the only question is being smart enough and educated enough to scrutinize the people who are writing the legislation, because there are plenty of ulterior motives out there.

It’s a similar feeling from being in a community of punk rockers as a teenager and the feeling I still get today when I’m in a community of skeptical scientists. The idea with both is that you challenge authority, you challenge the dogma. You challenge the doctrine in order to make progress. The thrill of science is the process. It’s a social process. It’s a process of collective discovery. It’s debate, it’s experimentation and it’s verification of claims that might be false. It’s the greatest foundation for a society.

Naturalism teaches one of the most important things in this world. There is only this life, so live wonderfully and meaningfully.

You can't take up all the music bins at a CD retail outlet with Spice Girls CDs and leave nothing for the Joan Jett catalogue.

I'm saying that there were many great naturalists before Darwin's time who were very pious people and who knew more about nature than most of us. These were great naturalists; people I would admire for their knowledge of natural science given the time.

there is no such thing as hell but you can make it if you try