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.

Taxonomy (the science of classification) is often undervalued as a glorified form of filing-with each species in its folder, like a stamp in its prescribed place in an album; but taxonomy is a fundamental and dynamic science, dedicated to exploring the causes of relationships and similarities among organisms. Classifications are theories about the basis of natural order, not dull catalogues compiled only to avoid chaos.

Evolution has encountered no intellectual trouble; no new arguments have been offered. Creationism is a home-grown phenomenon of American sociocultural history-a splinter movement ... who believe that every word in the Bible must be literally true, whatever such a claim might mean.

Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview.

What an odd time to be a fundamentalist about adaptation and natural selection - when each major subdiscipline of evolutionary biology has been discovering other mechanisms as adjuncts to selection's centrality.

If genius has any common denominator, I would propose breadth of interest and the ability to construct fruitful analogies between fields.

The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.