You gotta be a good sport! So when I would lose, I would say, "That guy was better than I was; what do I have to do to be better next time?"

Before we start talking about genetic differences, you gotta come up with a system where there's equal opportunity.

I knew Pluto was popular among elementary schoolkids, but I had no idea they would mobilize into a 'Save Pluto' campaign. I now have a drawer full of hate letters from hundreds of elementary schoolchildren (with supportive cover letters from their science teachers) pleading with me to reverse my stance on Pluto. The file includes a photograph of the entire third grade of a school posing on their front steps and holding up a banner proclaiming, 'Dr. Tyson - Pluto is a Planet!'

In the New Testament, Thomas Jefferson cut out everything that was mystical, magical, miracle - physically with scissors - and then pasted in all that remained, such as Jesus's Sermon on the Mount.

There's no shortage of people that we can put on, because science touches us all.

If your belief system is not founded in an objective reality, you should not be making decisions that affect other people.

To assert that the universe has a purpose implies the universe has intent. And intent implies a desired outcome. But who would do the desiring? And what would a desired outcome be? That carbon-based life is inevitable? Or that sentient primates are life's neurological pinnacle? Are answers to these questions even possible without expressing a profound bias of human sentiment? Of course humans were not around to ask these questions for 99.9999% of cosmic history. So if the purpose of the universe was to create humans then the cosmos was embarrassingly inefficient about it.