When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.

What you see is that the most outstanding feature of life's history is a constant domination by bacteria.

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.

Science is all those things which are confirmed to such a degree that it would be unreasonable to withhold one's provisional consent.

...we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations.

Any human being is really good at certain things. The problem is that the things you're good at come naturally. And since most people are pretty modest instead of an arrogant S.O.B. like me, what comes naturally, you don't see as a special skill. It's just you. It's what you've always done.

The origin of Homo sapiens, as a tiny twig on an improbable branch of a contingent limb on a fortunate tree, lies well below the boundary.