Bill Nye
In another couple centuries I'm sure that worldview won't even exist. There's no evidence for it.Collection: Couple
Reading their letters and the First Amendment of the US Constitution, I infer that this nation's founders noted that religions have been at the center of great deal of trouble, so they precluded the US government from getting involved in religion, i.e. "... shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." Over the centuries, various religions have laid claim to various morals; consider the difficulties outsiders are having today in the Middle East, for example.Collection: Reading
Anybody who grew up with the space program is a fan of science fiction.Collection: Space
The debate [in Undeniable] was nominally about creationism as a "viable" explanation for what we observe around us. For my side, the debate went very well; I'm not sure what I would change, although I can imagine shortening my answers during the rebuttals, perhaps.Collection: Sides
People that don't want to get down to the business at hand. Instead of just doing less, we have to find ways of doing more with less. That's the key to the future.Collection: Keys
Without an end to the burning of fossil fuels, coal especially, most of us will live shorter lives. I'm hopeful, but very, very concerned.Collection: Hopeful
There really is no such thing as race.Collection: Race
I meet so many people who are intimidated by arithmetic.Collection: People
Speaking of human computers, there is a guy named Art Benjamin, he's a human calculator. He says it's a skill he learned as a kid. Now he's a math professor at Harvey Mudd. He can find the square root of a six digit number in a few seconds. Practice.Collection: Art
History is but the record of the public and official acts of human beings. It is our object, therefore, to humanize our history and deal with people past and present; people who ate and possibly drank; people who were born, flourished and died; not grave tragedians, posing perpetually for their photographs.Collection: Past
The world's going to change climatically. We just want to control the change. We want to have a high quality of life for billions of people as we pass through this era.Collection: People
The oncoming trouble I speak of is climate change. It's going to affect all of you in the same way the Second World War consumed people of my parent's generation.Collection: War
The strange thing about grinding that might surprise many people is that you can grind things and shape them using materials that are generally somewhat softer than the thing you're grinding and shaping.Collection: People
If you have this idea that the earth is only 6,000 years old, you are denying, if you will, everything that you can touch and see. Youre not paying attention to whats happening in the universe around you.Collection: Years
I often reflect on what an extraordinary time (pun intended) it is to be alive here in the beginning of the twenty-first century. It took life billions of years to get to this point. It took humans thousands of years to piece together a meaningful understanding of our cosmos, our planet and ourselves. Think how fortunate we are to know this much. But think also of all that's yet to be discovered. Here's hoping the deep answers to the deep questions-from the nature of consciousness to the origin of life-will be found in not too much more time.Collection: Meaningful
Recommending or insisting on abstinence has been completely ineffective.Collection: Abstinence
How did we let an ideological resistance to inquiry become such a prominent part of our society?Collection: Our Society
For me, the meaning of life is pretty clear: Living things strive to pass their genes into the future.Collection: Meaning Of Life
There are two ways to be rich: to have more or need less. It's estimated that we squander about 30 percent of our energy leaving the lights on, the refrigerator door open, and so on. Then there is the enormous amount of food that we expend huge amounts of energy to raise and then throw away.Collection: Light
Hard to find anything lovelier than a tree. They grow at right angles to a tangent of the nominal sphere of the Earth.Collection: Tree
If you memorize the periodic table it will speed you up if you're a chemist, but by and large, the reason you have a periodic table is so that you can store that information outside of your body. That way it frees up some part of your brain to do something else...Collection: Brain
As my old professor Carl Sagan said so often, 'When you’re in love, you want to tell the world.’ And I base my beliefs on the information and the process that we call science. It fills me with joy to make discoveries every day of things I’ve never seen before. It fills me with joy to know that we can pursue these answers. It is an astonishing thing that we are — you and I are one of the ways the universe knows itself.Collection: Love You
Evolution is one of the most powerful and important ideas ever developed in the history of science. Every question it raises leads to new answers, new discoveries, and new smarter questions. The science of evolution is as expansive as nature itself. It is also the most meaningful creation story that humans have ever found.Collection: Meaningful
By the way, most of the light that comes from the sun is green.Collection: Light
When we explore the cosmos, we come to believe and prove that we can solve problems that have never been solved. It brings out the best in us. Space exploration imbues everyone with an optimistic view of the future.Collection: Believe
It is my mission to change the world. I'm not kidding: Make no small plans, dream mighty things. I feel if we get enough people engaged in climate change, we will get enough people to change the world. We will revolutionize the way we produce electricity and provide clean water to people.Collection: Dream
I say to the grown-ups, 'If you want to deny evolution and live in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we've observed in the universe that's fine. But don't make your kids do it.'Collection: Kids
But as the cerebellum degrades with age, so does the quality of memories. The memories are there, but they're not as good.Collection: Memories
Some of the most wonderful aspects and consequences of evolution have been discovered only recently. This is in stark contrast to creationism, which offers a static view of the world, one that cannot be challenged or tested with reason. And because it cannot make predictions, it cannot lead to new discoveries, new medicines, or new ways to feed all of us.Collection: Discovery
Talk about science with everyone you meet. Especially talk about climate change. It needs to become a part of our everyday conversation (the way it is everywhere else in the world).Collection: Everyday
We are special in the sense that we can know our place in the cosmos. We can know our place in space. We are at least one of the cosmos's ways of knowing itself. That fills me with reverence and joy. Another insight I really want people to consider is this: everyone has gotten this far. Everyone you meet has made it this far. Nobody is superior to anyone else from an evolutionary standpoint.Collection: Knowing
There are just two people entitled to refer to themselves as "we"; one is the editor and the other is the fellow with a tapeworm.Collection: Editors
I try to speak plainly and be sympathetic to the idea of religions where people gather in community. They get a sense of people looking out for each other. My claim is that we have a tendency to look out for each other whether or not there is a religion involved.Collection: Ideas
There are two questions that get to us all: Are we alone in the Universe? And, where did we come from? For me, science provides a much more satisfactory way to seek answers than does any religion I've come across. With that said, the universe is mysterious and wonderful. It fills me with reverence for nature and our place among the stars; our place in space.Collection: Stars
The Big Bang banged, and for some reason we’re here. And that’s astonishing. And that we can understand that, that’s the most astonishing.Collection: Bangs
Our goal in science is to discover universal laws of nature. That pursuit fills me with wonder.Collection: Law
We should educate more women and girls. Because that is the surest route to controllably, manageably reducing the human population. Educated women have fewer kids. And the kids they do have are better cared for and are more successful. As I like to say, it's not one thing that we need to focus on. It's everything all at once.Collection: Girl
No matter what you may believe spiritually or otherwise, the Earth is clearly not 6,000 or 10,000 years old.Collection: Believe
Not wasting any water bottles is good. Not leaving the lights on is good. Turning the thermostat down in the winter, up in the summer, is good. But the best thing any of us in the developed world, especially in the United States, can be doing is talking about it.Collection: Summer
I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, that's completely inconsistent with the world we observe, that's fine. But don't make your kids do it. Because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need engineers that can build stuff and solve problems.Collection: Kids
America has had many other discoverers besides Columbus, but he seems to have made more satisfactory arrangements with the historians than any of the others.Collection: America
That's what makes a human a human, if we store information outside our bodies.Collection: Body
The most serious problem facing humankind is climate change.Collection: Climate
Apparently there is redundancy in memory: You store the same memory in different parts of your brain for accessing at different speeds. That speed would depend on the frequency of use and the importance of the knowledge.Collection: Memories
Along with the evidence of common sense, researchers have proven scientifically that humans are all one people. We're a lot like dogs in that regard. If a Great Dane interacts (can we say interact?) with a Chihuahua, you get a dog.Collection: Dog
There is no debate in the scientific community...We need [Congress] to change things, not to deny what's happening.Collection: Leadership
If we raise a generation of students who dont believe in the process of science, who think everything that weve come to know about nature and the universe can be dismissed by a few sentences translated into English from some ancient text, youre not going to continue to innovate.Collection: Believe
We need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future.Collection: Needs
From an evolutionary standpoint you can't just wipe everything out and start over, and I don't think you can do it in the school system either.Collection: School