Modern science is under no obligation to satisfy the expectations of your five senses.

In the animal kingdom, one of the keys to survival is to outwit your enemies. And when you're surrounded by carnivores, one of the best strategies is to fade into the background and disappear.

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.

We should not measure our space-faring era by where footprints have been laid.... We should measure our era by how many people take no notice at all. A legacy rises to become culture only when its elements are so common that they no longer attract comment.

Down there between our legs, it's like an entertainment complex in the middle of a sewage system. Who designed that?

Some molecules - ammonia, carbon dioxide, water - show up everywhere in the universe, whether life is present or not. But others pop up especially in the presence of life itself. Among the biomarkers in Earth's atmosphere are ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons from aerosol sprays, vapor from mineral solvents, escaped coolants from refrigerators and air conditioners, and smog from the burning of fossil fuels. No other way to read that list: sure signs of the absence of intelligence.

With one linear centimeter of your lower colon there lives and works more bacteria (about 100 billion) that all humans who have ever been born. Yet many people continue to assert that it is we who are in charge of the world