Our humanist attitude should therefore throughout be to stress what we all have in common with each other and relegate quarrelsome religion to the private domain where it can do [less] harm.

... an opportunity to allow the bees in one's bonnet to buzz even more noisily than usual.

[Newton's calculations] entered the marrow of what we know without knowing how we know it.

An observer situated in a nebula and moving with the nebula will observe the same properties of the universe as any other similarly situated observer at any time.

If you walk along the street you will encounter a number of scientific problems. Of these, about 80 per cent are insoluble, while 19½ per cent are trivial. There is then perhaps half a per cent where skill, persistence, courage, creativity and originality can make a difference. It is always the task of the academic to swim in that half a per cent, asking the questions through which some progress can be made.

Religion divides us, while it is our human characteristics that bind us to each other.

We find no sense in talking about something unless we specify how we measure it; a definition by the method of measuring a quantity is the one sure way of avoiding talking nonsense.