Nothing matches the holiness and fascination of accurate and intricate detail.

The legends of fieldwork locate all important sites deep in inaccessible jungles inhabited by fierce beasts and restless natives, and surrounded by miasmas of putrefaction and swarms of tsetse flies.

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.

The dogmatist within is always worse than the enemy without.

Theory-free science makes about as much sense as value-free politics.

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.

Honorable errors do not count as failures in science, but as seeds for progress in the quintessential activity of correction.