"I had in mind a message, although I hope it doesn't intrude too badly, persuading Americans, and especially Southerners, of the critical importance of land and our vanishing natural environment and wildlife."

"I was a senior in high school when I decided I wanted to work on ants as a career. I just fell in love with them, and have never regretted it."

"By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified."

"Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society."

"Science will explain how but not why. It talks about what is, not what ought to be. Science is descriptive, not prescriptive it can tell us about causes but it cannot tell us about purposes. Indeed, science disavows purposes."

"I'd love to do a movie where the monster is human, where the issue is not otherworldly, or horror or science fiction."

"Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth."

"The central task of science is to arrive, stage by stage, at a clearer comprehension of nature, but this does not at all mean, as it is sometimes claimed to mean, a search for mastery over nature."