There could be something incredibly grand and incomprehensible and beyond our present understanding.

By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out. -this quote is actually found in Carl Sagan's book The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, where he attributes it to engineer James Oberg, who says he stole it from someone else.

The universe doesn't owe you a sense of hope

Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose

I believe that an orderly universe, one indifferent to human preoccupations, in which everything has an explanation even if we still have a long way to go before we find it, is a more beautiful, more wonderful place than a universe tricked out with capricious ad hoc magic.

Do you really mean the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward? That's not morality, that's just sucking up.

I was brought up in a family which valued natural history. Both my parents knew the names of all the British wildflowers, so as we went walking the country, I was constantly being exposed to a natural history sort of knowledge.