Play hard, work hard, love hard. . . .The bottom line for me is to live life to the fullest in the here-and-now instead of a hoped-for hereafter, and make every day count in some meaningful way and do something-no matter how small it is-to make the world a better place.

In principle, skeptics are neither closed-minded nor cynical. We are curious but cautious.

But because we live in an age of science, we have a preoccupation with corroborating our myths.

For solving a surprisingly large and varied number of problems, crowds are smarter than individuals.

Mammals are sentient beings that want to live and are afraid to die. Evolution vouchsafed us all with an instinct to survive, reproduce and flourish.

Darwin matters because evolution matters. Evolution matters because science matters. Science matters because it is the preeminent story of our age, an epic saga about who we are, where we came from and where we are going.

Believers can have both religion and science as long as there is no attempt to make A non-A, to make reality unreal, to turn naturalism into supernaturalism. (125)