I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know.

Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.

In comparison, Google is brilliant because it uses an algorithm that ranks Web pages by the number of links to them, with those links themselves valued by the number of links to their page of origin.

When alien abductees recount to me their stories, I do not deny that they had a real experience.

Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable.

I care what is actually true, even more than what I hope is true.

The actual atoms and molecules that make up my brain and body today are not the same ones that I was born with on September 8, 1954, a half-century ago this month.