It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clicks into place. One immediately sees how many previously puzzling facts are neatly explained by the new hypothesis. One could kick oneself for not having the idea earlier, it

What could be more foolish than to base one’s entire view of life on ideas that, however plausible at the time, now appear to be quite erroneous? And what would be more important than to find our true place in the universe by removing one by one these unfortunate vestiges of earlier beliefs?

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Free will is located in or near the anterior cingulate sulcus.

Since I essentially knew nothing, I had an almost completely free choice.

A busy life is a wasted life.

Chance is the only source of true novelty.

Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children.

An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.

It is essential to understand our brains in some detail if we are to assess correctly our place in this vast and complicated universe we see all around us.

Consciousness is somehow a by-product of the simultaneous, high frequency firing of neurons in different parts of the brain. It’s the meshing of these frequencies that generates consciousness, just as tones from individual instruments produce the rich, complex, & seamless sounds of a symphony orchestra

My own prejudices are exactly the opposite of the functionalists’: “If you want to understand function, study structure”.

The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry.

Evolution is cleverer than you are.

Almost all aspects of life are engineered at the molecular level, and without understanding molecules we can only have a very sketchy understanding of life itself.

A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong

You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.

A good scientist values criticism almost higher than friendship: no, in science criticism is the height and measure of friendship.

The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he’ll fight and die for it.

Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.