I don't think we are here for anything. We're just products of evolution. You can say, "Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose." But I'm anticipating a good lunch.

Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles.

Science moves with the spirit of an adventure characterized both by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, would be simple as well as pretty.

Knowing "why" (an idea) is more important than learning "what" (the fact).

It's necessary to be slightly underemployed if you are to do something significant.

No one may have the guts to say this, but if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we?

We're not all equal, it's simply not true. That isn't science.

Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them.

Our goal should be to understand our differences.

The way to do great science is to stay away from subjects that are overpopulated, and go to the frontiers.

Never be the brightest person in the room.

You can never play a part in life, especially not in love.

Lo, each subculture has its own language, and verily I am not a parody. You don’t believe me? Get with the program, crackpot!

The dead outnumber the living fourteen to one, and we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind at our peril

You always pay too much. Particularly for promises. There aint no such thing as a bargain promise.

To make anything a habit, do it; to not make it a habit, do not do it; to unmake a habit, do something else in place of it.

There are fewer things more thrilling in life than lumpy letters. That rattle.

In America, they want you to accomplish these great feats, to pull off these David Copperfield-type stunts. You want me to be great, but you don't ever want me to say I'm great?

Love, like life, is much stranger and far more complicated than one is brought up to believe.

Just because I can't change everything, doesn't mean I shouldn't try to change anything at all.

The money game is not like any other game. You cannot choose whether you'll play, for the money game is the only game in town.