People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great.

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.

The more beautiful the vision, the more complicated the execution.

I don't have good business sense. You never get much money for the arts. But I like independence. I like to grow.

Perhaps believing in good design is like believing in God, it makes you an optimist.

My father taught me that the only way you can make good at anything is to practice, and then practice some more.

The idea that a child doesn't have the opportunity to be a child is devastating.

I've missed half or two-thirds of my children's lives.

But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send, Save me, oh, save me, from the candid friend!

The commercial media are to the mental environment what factories are to the physical environment

If I feel like I'm going too far in one direction, I just can it. It's a weird thing. Some of my songs might be cheesy; I try and keep it light. It's hard to explain.

Actually I was more of a breaker than a thrower - most of them putters. I broke so many of those that I probably became the world's foremost authority on how to putt without a putter.