[The writers of the holy books] did not even know the earth revolves around the sun. Why are we listening?

The lack of understanding of something is not evidence for God. It's evidence of a lack of understanding.

The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it.

I like to say that while antimatter may seem strange, it is strange in the sense that Belgians are strange. They are not really strange; it is just that one rarely meets them.

Without science, everything is a miracle.

As a scientist, I don't believe anything. Science shouldn't use the word belief. There are things more likely and less likely. Science can say nothing with absolute certainty.

Forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.

Keeping religion immune from criticism is both unwarranted and dangerous.

Whatever the evolutionary basis of religion, the xenophobia it now generates is clearly maladaptive.

It is a shame when nonsense can substitute for fact with impunity.

The fact is that people would rather cling when they're afraid of something to a priori beliefs than rather open their minds about it.

Miracles await you when you begin to serve people

He could sit in the dust and dark of the carriage house and rot for the rest of his life. Clearly that's what he wished to do. It was not my place to get in the way of so profound a destiny.

Writing is 90% struggle. The other 10% is up to you.

Oh,Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer.

Purity is also developed in action. Purity is developed when we love.

Those who have a desire to teach while coming to learn should not pose as disciples; they must come as teachers.

There is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities.

In nature we find not only that which is expedient, but also everything which is not so inexpedient as to endanger the existence of the species.

So many young people feel powerless. We live in a world where it feels like it's so big and yet so small, and that your contribution really doesn't matter.

The poem in which the reader does not feel himself or herself a participant is a lecture, listened to from an uncomfortable chair, in a stuffy room, inside a building.