We should remember that there was once a discipline called natural philosophy. Unfortunately, this discipline seems not to exist today. It has been renamed science, but science of today is in danger of losing much of the natural philosophy aspect.

There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.

Most people today still believe, perhaps unconsciously, in the heliocentric universe every newspaper in the land has a section on astrology, yet few have anything at all on astronomy.

We have to learn again that science without contact with experiments is an enterprise which is likely to go completely astray into imaginary conjecture.

I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free will.

People have extreme beliefs about whether it is right for humans to tamper with embryos in any way at all. Sometimes the values discussion gets conflated with the science discussion. We shouldn't pretend we're having an argument about science when we're having an argument about values.

My sense, talking to the general public around the country, is that most people don't have a very high level of scientific literacy.

I had no new ideas on the physics we might learn, and I could not compete with the younger generation.