It's very likely that most mammals have consciousness, and probably birds, too.

At least the fundamentalists haven't tried to dilute their message. Their faith is exposed for what it is for all to see.

The history of science has been one long series of violent brainstorms, as successive generations have come to terms with increasing levels of queerness in the universe.

The world is well supplied with spiders whose male ancestors died after mating. The world is bereft of spiders whose would-be ancestors never mated in the first place.

The supernatural is ubiquitous in children's entertainment, from Grimm and Hans Andersen to Disney and 'Harry Potter.'

'What is the purpose of the universe?' is a silly question.

I would like people to appreciate science in the same way they appreciate the arts.

The earliest books in the New Testament to be written were the Epistles, not the Gospels. It's almost as though Saint Paul and others who wrote the Epistles weren't that interested in whether Jesus was real.

What's going to happen when I die? I may be buried, or I may be cremated, I may give my body to science. I haven't decided yet.

People like to trace their ancestry.

When a company seeks a new chief executive officer, or a university a new vice-chancellor, enormous trouble is taken to find the best person.

I've always been very suspicious of the left-right dimension in politics.

I'm sure Obama is an atheist; I'm sure Kennedy was an atheist, but I doubt if Pope Frank is.

Coming out as an atheist can cost an academic his or her job in some parts of America, and many choose to keep quiet about their atheism.

I am very conscious that you can't condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours.

There's a mystical strain in every country, and eclipses are likely to bring that out.

I love words.

But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.

I didn't know children were expected to have literary heroes, but I certainly had one, and I even identified with him at one time: Doctor Dolittle, whom I now half identify with the Charles Darwin of Beagle days.

Tortoises can survive for weeks without food or water, easily long enough to float in the Humboldt Current from South America to the Galapagos Islands.

A constellation is not an entity at all, not the kind of thing that Uranus, or anything else, can sensibly be said to 'move into.'

Any teaching of falsehoods in science classes should certainly be identified and stopped by school inspectors. School inspectors should be looking at science teachings to make sure they are evidence-based science.

Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs.

My interest in biology was pretty much always on the philosophical side.

Nico Tinbergen was my doctoral supervisor, and he was a benign, avuncular sort of influence; everybody loved him.

Evil is a miscellaneous collection of nasty things that nasty people do.

I wouldn't want to have the thought police going to people's homes, dictating what they teach their children. I don't want to be Big Brotherish. I would hate that.

I read novels for entertainment rather than for edification, so I tend not to read the sort of novels that are said to illuminate the human condition.

I guess the Democrats have to pretend to be more pious than the Republicans because they are under suspicion of not being.

I was confirmed at my prep school at the age of 13.

I was never much bothered about moral questions like, 'How could there be a good God when there's so much evil in the world?'

Humans are just a very, very small part of the panoply of life, and it is arguable that in a certain sense, humans have emancipated themselves from Darwinian selection.

I am baffled by the way sophisticated theologians who know Adam and Eve never existed still keep talking about it.

If there are other worlds elsewhere in the universe, I would conjecture they are governed by the same laws of natural selection.

There are people who try to get atheists to form a sort of atheist church and have atheist community singsongs and things. I don't see the need for that, but if people want to do it, why shouldn't they?

It's a difficult business, finding out what's true about the world, the universe.

We are a very, very unusual species.

I have begun several projects which were never completed, not necessarily because they failed, but because I got interested in other things.

Saddam Hussein could have provided irreplaceable help to future historians of the Iran/Iraq war, of the invasion of Kuwait, and of the subsequent era of sanctions culminating in the current invasion.

What's wrong with being elitist if you are trying to encourage people to join the elite rather than being exclusive?

Religious organisations have an automatic tax-free charitable status.

Compassionate doctors sometimes lie to patients about the severity of their condition, and it is not always wrong to do so.

If your plane is being hijacked by an armed man who, though prepared to take risks, presumably wants to go on living, there is room for bargaining.

As Darwin himself was at pains to point out, natural selection is all about differential survival within species, not between them.

I did a film that's on YouTube of me reading hate mail with a woman playing the cello in the background.

I'm quite a softy, yes. I have a blank spot with respect to visual art, but I have perhaps a compensating hypersensitivity to poetry and music.

Notoriously, the United States is the most religious of the Western advanced nations. It's a bit mysterious why that is.

Although many of us fear death, I think there is something illogical about it.

I get the feeling more and more that religion is being left behind.

I've never been the sort of firebrand that I've been made out to be. I'm actually quite a mild person.