I dreamed of becoming a scientist, in general, and a paleontologist, in particular, ever since the Tyrannosaurus skeleton awed and scared me.

Nature is what she is - amoral and persistent.

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

People talk about human intelligence as the greatest adaptation in the history of the planet. It is an amazing and marvelous thing, but in evolutionary terms, it is as likely to do us in as to help us along.

The world is too complex for subsumption under any general theory of change.

A lot of scientists hate writing. Most scientists love being in the lab and doing the work and when the work is done, they are finished.

People are clever, but almost no one ever devises an optimal quip precisely at the needed moment. Therefore, virtually all great one-liners are later inventions - words that people wished they had spouted, but failed to manufacture at the truly opportune instant.