The media need superheroes in science just as in every sphere of life, but there is really a continuous range of abilities with no clear dividing line.

God tells us not to judge one another, no matter what anyone’s sexual preferences are or if they’re black, brown or purple.

The equal right of all citizens to health, education, work, food, security, culture, science, and wellbeing – that is, the same rights we proclaimed when we began our struggle, in addition to those which emerge from our dreams of justice and equality for all inhabitants of our world – is what I wish for all.

All religions must be tolerated… for every man must get to heaven in his own way.

To terrify children with the image of hell… to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?

I love it when Muslims go to war with each other, as I do when the Christians do, because it shows there’s no such thing as the Christian world and the Islamic world. That’s all crap.

All men are equal before fish.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

The greatest progress is in the sciences that study the simplest systems. So take, say, physics – greatest progress there. But one of the reasons is that the physicists have an advantage that no other branch of sciences has. If something gets too complicated, they hand it to someone else.

No intelligent black man or black woman in his or her right black mind wants white boys and white girls coming to their homes to marry their black sons and daughters.

There isn’t anybody that looks like me without clothes on.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

I was a very keen reader of science fiction, and during the time I was going to libraries, it was good, written by people who knew their science.

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that ‚Oryx and Crake‘ is anti-science. Science is a way of knowing, and a tool. Like all ways of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, it’s neutral.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.

Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year and yet far too little for the next 10.

You can choose a future where more Americans have the chance to gain the skills they need to compete, no matter how old they are or how much money they have. Education was the gateway to opportunity for me. It was the gateway for Michelle. And now more than ever, it is the gateway to a middle-class life.

The capacity of the female mind for studies of the highest order cannot be doubted, having been sufficiently illustrated by its works of genius, of erudition, and of science.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

Let us build bridges, my friends, build bridges to human dignity across that gulf that separates black America from white America.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.

The most obvious characteristic of science is its application: the fact that, as a consequence of science, one has a power to do things. And the effect this power has had need hardly be mentioned. The whole industrial revolution would almost have been impossible without the development of science.

I loved the fact that Obama is multi-racial. I thought that was terrific, as my wife is the same racial make-up.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

It’s annoying, but justice and equality are mates. Aren’t they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain.

Science never makes things that do not have to do with what we feel, by which I mean what we want and what we fear.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It’s really counterintuitive.

Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no. That’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president?

The black press, some liberal sportswriters, and even a few politicians were banging away at those Jim Crow barriers in baseball. I never expected the walls to come tumbling down in my lifetime.

I certainly agree that putting everything into little genres is counterproductive. You’re not going to get too many surprises if you only focus on the stuff that fits inside the box that you know.

My parents taught me never to judge others based on whom they love, what color their skin is, or their religion.

There is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.

In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

Electricity is really just organized lightning.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.

If proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love then surely, surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream.

If a child from an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe comes to Boston, is raised in Boston, that child will be indistinguishable in language capacities from my children growing up here, and vice versa.

I don’t think marriage is a civil right, but I think that being able to transfer property is a civil right.

New discoveries in science will continue to create a thousand new frontiers for those who still would adventure.

A good wife is one who serves her husband in the morning like a mother does, loves him in the day like a sister does and pleases him like a prostitute in the night.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Right now, when we’re hearing so much disturbing and hateful rhetoric, it is so important to remember that our diversity has been – and will always be – our greatest source of strength and pride here in the United States.

A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman as bad as she dares.

I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters – two beautiful, intelligent black young women – playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters, and all our sons and daughters, now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.

There are as many opinions as there are experts.

Science sent the Hubble telescope out into space, so it could capture light and the absence thereof, from the very beginning of time. And the telescope really did that. So now we know that there was once absolutely nothing, such a perfect nothing that there wasn’t even nothing or once.

I think there ought to be a strict separation or wall built between our religious faith and our practice of political authority in office. I don’t think the President of the United States should extoll Christianity if he happens to be a Christian at the expense of Judaism, Islam or other faiths.

What makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal – that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will.

Justice is the set and constant purpose which gives every man his due.

I remember being in Japan when Destiny’s Child put out ‚Independent Women,‘ and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realized that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way.

Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.

To like an individual because he’s black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn’t white.

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.