Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition.

Evolution is one of the two or three most primally fascinating subjects in all the sciences.

All interesting issues in natural history are questions of relative frequency, not single examples. Everything happens once amidst the richness of nature. But when an unanticipated phenomenon occurs again and again—finally turning into an expectation—then theories are overturned.

Mary Anning [is] probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology.

... each with its own beauty, and each with a story to tell.

If I have any insight at all to contribute it is this: find out what you are really good at and stick to it.

... many folks take them seriously because they just 'know' that evolution can never be seen in the immediate here and now. In fact, a precisely opposite situation prevails: biologists have documented a veritable glut of cases for rapid and eminently measurable evolution on timescales of years and decades.