Most evolving lineages, human or otherwise, when threatened with extinction, don't do anything special to avoid it.

I am convinced that it is the light and the way.

The only realistic view is that a human life arises gradually, which is not much help in making personal decisions or devising public policy.

The moment-of-conception fallacy implies that fertilization is a simple process with never a doubt as to whether it has or has not happened.

Many traditional religions foster attitudes that ought to have disappeared as biological understanding accumulated over the last century.

The general rule is that anything that is passed on in reproduction does not undergo senescence.

Ever since then, all descendant vertebrates have had the forward end of the digestive system and the forward end of the respiratory system very much involved with each other. This manifests itself in the human body with a crossing of the two systems in the throat.

Darwin based his theory on generalizations that were strictly empirical. You can go out and see that organisms do vary, that variations are inherited, and that every organism is capable of increasing its numbers in sufficiently favorable circumstances.

Most evolving lineages, human or otherwise, when threatened with extinction, don't do anything special to avoid it.

I think that my main criticism in that book was directed at the general assumption that adaptation characterizes populations and species, rather than simply the individuals in the populations and species.

Job's avoidance of rebellion against God has nothing to do with God being good or wise or anything like that; it's strictly because God is so powerful, and you don't fight something when you are so much weaker than that which you would fight.

I wanted to write a novel. At 12 I knew, I am a writer. I said it to nobody.

I don't think of myself as a rebel; I just say what I think.

I have come to the conclusion that it's a waste of time to have too much pride in anything. Perhaps it's good to have a sense of duty, a jealous zeal to protect or improve, but pride ultimately is only that which stands vulnerable to offense and degradation.

Most people assume that women are responsible for households and child care. Most couples operate that way - not all. That fundamental assumption holds women back.

I thought I lost something this summer but I just realized I never needed it.

Confidence without skill is just emptiness.

During the period 1901 to 1905, together with Senderens, I showed that nickel is very suitable for the direct hydrogenation of nitriles into amines and, no less important, of aldehydes and acetones into corresponding alcohols.

Trump is not going to win the presidency because he himself is a weak, weak candidate.

All you owe the public is a good performance.

Most people don't have so much talent that they can become a success all their own. We all need people to help us and lift us up.

Good food is all the sweeter when shared with good friends.

Rather than being an interpreter, the scientist who embraces a new paradigm is like the man wearing inverting lenses.

If I read the word 'problematize' one more time, I'm going to vomit.

Follow your instincts. Do the kind of writing you love to do and do best. 'Stiff' was an oddball book - I mean, a funny book about cadavers? - and I worried that it would be too unconventional. In the end, that's what has made it a success, I think.

What's Denver's feel? I know there're mountains, and people in western hats, but I never got a good sense of the city.

I have a lot of respect for the auto manufacturers. They make a product people live inside - and can die inside - so they are held to very high standards.

I wouldn't mind being in a relationship, but there's no reason to marry.

I started out as a dancer as a kid; I've been dancing since I was 4. So performing was always part of what I was.

In October, 1865, occurred what was, in my eyes, the greatest event in the history of the observatory. The new transit circle arrived from Berlin in its boxes.

Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of but stigma and bias shame us all.

I've always been drawn to tormented people full of contradictions.

Looking back on my life, I wish I'd stepped forward and made a fool of myself more often when I was younger - because when you do, you find out you can do it.

Once you find you can't walk as far and as fast as you were able, life becomes more complicated.

I get burnt in the sun, so there's no point me getting pecs for when I take my shirt off in the summer.