Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is himself the way.
I'm not going to argue with people about the existence of God. I have not the vaguest idea of whether the universe was created by an intelligence.
To understand a difficult topic like Iraq takes patience and care. Unfortunately, you rarely hear a patient, careful or thoughtful discussion of intelligence these days.
And indeed this theme has been at the centre of all my research since 1943, both because of its intrinsic fascination and my conviction that a knowledge of sequences could contribute much to our understanding of living matter.
To try to write a grand cosmical drama leads necessarily to myth. To try to let knowledge substitute ignorance in increasingly larger regions of space and time is science.
We get more dangerous as we accumulate knowledge, and that's both a sadness and something to control, try to learn to live with, make terms with.
You learn that the interest is in what you don't yet know and that theories evolve. But we nonetheless have progress and improved knowledge over time.
I think that by creating a world of plenty, by creating institutions and organizations that promote knowledge and promote understanding, I think I could be part of being in a better world.
I have the same sense of the power and virtue of knowledge that some people get from a religious background.
For many decades now - and certainly during my adult life in academe - the Western intellectual world has not been convinced that theology is a pursuit that can be engaged in with intellectual honesty and integrity.
Dark energy is incredibly strange, but actually it makes sense to me that it went unnoticed, because dark energy has no effect on daily life, or even inside our solar system.
We know there is gravity because apples fall from trees. We can observe gravity in daily life. If we could throw an apple to the edge of the universe, we would observe it accelerating.
I know it's a rare privilege, but if one can really tackle something in adult life that means that much to you, then it's more rewarding than anything I can imagine.
Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy our country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage.
One way to define spiritual life is getting so tired and fed up with yourself you go on to something better, which is following Jesus.
If you keep the Sabbath, you start to see creation not as somewhere to get away from your ordinary life, but a place to frame an attentiveness to your life.
Life asks not merely what you can do; it asks how much can you endure and not be spoiled.
Every human life involves an unfathomable mystery, for man is the riddle of the universe, and the riddle of man in his endowment with personal capacities.
While it was a very interesting period in my life, I was happy to get back to more direct contact with students in the classroom and in my research projects.
We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life.
I did not imagine that the second half of my life would be spent on efforts to avert a mortal danger to humanity created by science.
