The more details we learn about the chemical basis of life and the intricacy of the genetic code, the more unbelievable the standard historical account becomes

The great cognitive shift is an expansion of consciousness from the perspectival form contained in the lives of particular creatures to an objective, world-encompassing form that exists both individually and intersubjectively. It was originally a biological evolutionary process, and in our species it has become a collective cultural process as well. Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.

I should not really object to dying were it not followed by death.

Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.

The universe has become not only conscious and aware of itself but capable in some respects of choosing its path into the future--though all three, the consciousness, the knowledge, and the choice, are dispersed over a vast crowd of beings, acting both individually and collectively.

Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable.

equally real at all stages of his life; specifically, the fact that a particular stage is present cannot be regarded as conferring on it any special status.