Science can lift people out of poverty and cure disease. That, in turn, will reduce civil unrest.

The human capacity for guilt is such that people can always find ways to blame themselves

I would rather be right than rigorous.

If there really is a complete unified theory that governs everything, it presumably also determines your actions. But it does so in a way that is impossible to calculate for an organism that is as complicated as a human being. The reason we say that humans have free will is because we can't predict what they will do.

I want my books sold on airport bookstalls.

One might think this means that imaginary numbers are just a mathematical game having nothing to do with the real world. From the viewpoint of positivist philosophy, however, one cannot determine what is real. All one can do is find which mathematical models describe the universe we live in. It turns out that a mathematical model involving imaginary time predicts not only effects we have already observed but also effects we have not been able to measure yet nevertheless believe in for other reasons. So what is real and what is imaginary? Is the distinction just in our minds?

I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science. It has no beginning and no end.