Evolution is an inference from thousands of independent sources, the only conceptual structure that can make unified sense of all this disparate information.

Human life is the result of a glorious evolutionary accident.

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

All science is intelligent inference; excessive literalism is delusion, not a humble bowing to evidence.

Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview.

I am glad that the life of pandas is so dull by human standards, for our efforts at conservation have little moral value if we preserve creatures only as human ornaments; I shall be impressed when we show solicitude for warty toads and slithering worms.

Science is not 'organized common sense'; at its most exciting, it reformulates our view of the world by imposing powerful theories against the ancient, anthropocentric prejudices that we call intuition.