The universe has a much greater imagination than we do, which is why the real story of the universe is far more interesting than any of the fairy tales we have invented to describe it.

Science has been effective at furthering our understanding of nature because the scientific ethos is based on three key principles: (1) follow the evidence wherever it leads; (2) if one has a theory, one needs to be willing to try to prove it wrong as much as one tries to prove that it is right; (3) the ultimate arbiter of truth is experiment, not the comfort one derives from one's a priori beliefs, nor the beauty or elegance one ascribes to one's theoretical models.

People are interested in science, but they don't always know they're interested in science, and so I try to find a way to get them interested.

Organized religion, wielding power over the community, is antithetical to the process of what modern democracy should define as liberty. The sooner we are without it, the better.

The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it.

For, after all, in science one achieves the greatest impact (and often the greatest headlines) not by going along with the herd, but by bucking against it.

Occam's razor suggests that, if some event is physically plausible, we don't need recourse to more extraordinary claims for its being. Surely the requirement of an all-powerful deity who somehow exists outside of our universe, or multiverse, while at the same time governing what goes on inside it, is one such claim. It should thus be a claim of last, rather than first, resort.