“Science gives me hope. Not just because it’s inherently optimistic, but also because it’s a practical way of improving things.”

“Just because science can't in practice explain things like the love that motivates a poet to write a sonnet, that doesn't mean that religion can. It's a simple and logical fallacy to say, ' If science can't do something, therefore religion can.”

“I will not end on a happy note, because there isn't one. But neither do I despair. One doesn't fight only when one is optimistic. One fights because it is the right thing to do and because America remains, as Lincoln said, 'the last best hope of earth.”

“I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”

“science is the best way to do anything (if you want to do terrible things with technology, a terrible weapons for example science is the best way to do it because science is the best way to do anything)”

“Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.”

“Optimists and pessimists die the same way. They just live differently. I prefer to live as an optimist.”

“There doesn't need to be a God for me. There's something in people that's spiritual, that's godlike. I don't feel like doing things just because people say things, but I also don't really know if it's better to just not believe in anything, either.”

“My idea is to give hope, because where there is no hope, there is no vision, and where there is no vision, people will perish.”

“But it's just because the chances are all against you, just because there is so little hope, that life is sweet over here.”