However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead. - Richard Dawkins

Next time somebody tells you something that sounds important, think to yourself: 'Is this the kind of thing that people probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only believe because of tradition, authority or revelation?' And, next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: 'What kind of evidence is there for that?' And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.

Show me a cultural relativist at 30,000 feet and I'll show you a hypocrite ... If you are flying to an international congress of anthropologists or literary critics, the reason you will probably get there - the reason you don't plummet into a ploughed field - is that a lot of Western scientifically trained engineers have got their sum right.

We admit that we are like , but we seldom realise that we are apes. Our common ancestor with the chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas is much more recent than their common ancestor with the Asian apes — the and orangutans. There is no natural category that includes chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans but excludes humans.