Quotes from Bill Nye

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.

Try this way of picturing a human lifespan. The National Football League's Dallas Cowboys' stadium holds 105,000 people. Now, imagine that you're watching life go by down on the field, and every day you watch that life go by from a different seat. You don't even get a third of the way around. Before you've settled into a third of the seats, you'd be dead. And, that's if you had a good run, eighty-two-plus years. Yikes!

Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature.

Altruism is not a moral or religious ideal, no matter what some people might tell you, it is an essential biological part of who or what we are as a species.

Humans Control the Earth; Nerds Should Guide the Humans

This is a book about everything. It is about everything I know and about everything I think you should know, too.

As an engineer trained in the U.S., I look at the assault on evolution—which is actually an assault on science overall—as much more than an intellectual issue; for me, it's personal. I feel strongly that we need the young people of today to become the scientists and the engineers of tomorrow so that my native United States continues to be a world leader in discovery and innovation. If we suppress science in this country, we are headed for trouble.

Science is the way in which we know nature and our place within it.

Nature, everywhere the most amazingly and outstandingly remarkable producer of living bodies, being most carefully arranged according to physical, mechanical, and chemical laws, does not give even the smallest hint of its extraordinary and tireless workings and quite clearly points to its work as being alone worthy of a benign and omnipotent God…

All of us, everyone reading these words, have made it this far in life. None of us would be here if we weren't genetically good enough. That's a rather encouraging thought. We celebrate certain people's appearance or their wit, but we are all so much more alike than we are different. The proof is in the living: We all made it. No matter how ugly you think someone else is, he or she got here just like (as) you did. There's a lid for every pot, as the saying goes.

everyone you meet knows something you don't

If your house is on fire, you don't comfort yourself with the thought that houses have been catching fire for thousands of years. You don't sit idly back and think, "Oh well, that is the way of nature." You get going, immediately. And you don't spring into action because of an idealistic notion that houses deserve to be saved. You do it because if you don't, you won't have a place to live.

To leave the world better than you found it, sometimes you have to pick up other people's trash.

THe problems don't care who solves them.

So remarkably deaf was my grandfather Squeers That he had to wear lightning-rods over his ears To even hear thunder, and oftentimes then He was forced to request it to thunder again.

the naysayers are not only casting doubt on science and nonbelievers; they are also ignoring the billions of non-conflicted believers around the world, dismissing their views as unworthy.

I feel strongly that we need the young people of today to become the scientists and the engineers of tomorrow so that my native United States continues to be a world leader in discovery and innovation. If we suppress science in this country, we are headed for trouble.

Scientifically speaking, there is tribalism and group bias, but there cannot be any such thing as racism. We are all one.

We are a result of evolution, and therefore so are our creations—both the not-so-good and very good. It's glorious.

In his writings, Darwin makes it clear that he cannot state whether or not there is a creator in charge. The idea was impossible to prove or disprove then, and it still is today.

Altruism is not a moral or religious ideal, no matter what some people might tell you. It is essential, biological part of who or what we are as a species.

Configuring necks this way is almost certainly not how a designer or engineer would build the world. But the details all make perfect sense once you embrace the idea that evolution does not work the way a human designer or engineer would.

That's what makes the creationist viewpoint not just staggeringly wrong, but sadly impoverished. In twisting around the Second Law of Thermodynamics, they take a powerful tool for understanding the world and try to make it into a barrier to understanding instead.

Even in places like Pennsylvania and Kentucky, here in the United States, the whole idea of evolution is overwhelming, confusing, frightening, and even threatening to many individuals. I can understand why. It's an enormous process, unfolding over times that dwarf a human lifespan—across billions of years and in every part of the world. And it's profoundly humbling.