Undeniable Quotes

“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.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“Inherent in this rejection of evolution is the idea that your curiosity about the world is misplaced and your common sense is wrong. This attack on reason is an attack on all of us. Children who accept this ludicrous perspective will find themselves opposed to progress. They will become society’s burdens rather than its producers, a prospect that I find very troubling. Not only that, these kids will never feel the joy of discovery that science brings. They will have to suppress the basic human curiosity that leads to asking questions, exploring the world around them, and making discoveries. They will miss out on countless exciting adventures. We’re robbing them of basic knowledge about their world and the joy that comes with it. It breaks my heart.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“It was fun for me also to point out that this brand of young-Earth creationism claims that kangaroos came from a huge ship, the ark, which is supposed to have safely run aground on Mount Ararat in modern-day Turkey. It’s a respectable peak—5,165 meters (almost 17,000 feet)—and it’s snowcapped. It’s not clear to me how all the animals and humans made the arduous descent. The kangaroos, both of them, are supposed to have made it down the mountain, ran or hopped from there to Australia—and no one saw them. Furthermore, if they took a reasonable amount of time to make the trip, you’d expect some kangaroo pups or joeys to have been born and some adults to have died along the way. You’d expect some kangaroo fossils out there somewhere in what is now Laos or Tibet. Also, they are supposed to have run across a land bridge from Eurasia to Australia. But there’s no evidence of such a bridge or any kangaroo fossils in that area, not any.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“Mr. Ham claims there were 7,000 kinds of animals on Noah’s ark; there are about 16 million species extant today (that’s my very conservative estimate based on recent surveys of life). To get from 7,000 species 4,000 years ago to 16 million today, we’d need to find 11 new species every day. Not every year! And not 11 individual animals! Eleven new species would need to be identified every single day! It’s a multiplication and division problem. Not difficult,”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“Our reactions to other groups are real enough, but evolutionary biology shows that those reactions have nothing to do with race, because race is not real. Scientifically speaking, there is tribalism and group bias, but there cannot be any such thing as racism. We are all one.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“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.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“We celebrate certain people's appearance or wit, but we are all so much more alike than we are different. The proof is in the living: We all made it.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“In our evolutionary world, good enough is as good as it gets. There is no reason for nature to work any other way. There is no evolutionary pressure to produce designs that are better than they need to be.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“Earth will be here no matter what we do. Let's work together to save the world - for us...”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“We cannot predict the behaviour of the whole, complex, connected system. We cannot know what will go wrong or right. However we can be absolutely certain that by reducing or destroying biodiversity, our world will be less able to adapt.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“Imagine this man or some of his followers on a jury. If their minds were made up, there would be nothing for the defense or prosecuting attorneys to do. No evidence would sway these jurors. They would refuse to use their intellect to assess the quality of evidence. They would not employ even the most rudimentary critical thinking skill.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

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― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“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.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“We are all so much alike, because we are all human. But it goes deeper than that. Every species you’ll encounter on Earth is, near as we can tell, chemically the same inside. We are all descended from a common ancestor. We are shaped by the same forces and factors that influence every other living thing, and yet we emerged as something unique. Among the estimated 16 million species on Earth, we alone have the ability to comprehend the process that brought us here. Any way you reckon it, evolution is inspiring.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“Every other aspect of life that was once attributed to divine intent is now elegantly and completely explained in the context of evolutionary science. For me, there is no reason to think that the origin of life is any different. I am open-minded, and have no problem with most religions, but religious explanations are unsatisfactory. They don’t take me anywhere; you either believe them or you don’t, and that’s that. Scientific theories of the origin of life are open to questions, to tests, to revisions, to replacement with new and more insightful theories. One path leads to a dead halt. The other leads to thrilling, limitless forward motion.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“What would we learn from an alien? It could be astonishing. We’d quickly find out if life necessarily needs a genetic code, a cell membrane, similar kinds of appendages, and familiar sorts of sensory organs.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“In terrestrial life, the characteristic elements in a membrane are carbon, nitrogen, potassium, and sodium. There’s a place to start … unless Europan life came up with a totally different way to make a membrane. Then how would you find it? If you like this kind of thinking, consider becoming an astrobiologist.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“Venus is kept that way by a thick, dense atmosphere that’s full of carbon dioxide. It’s the greenhouse effect gone wild—runaway, as it is oft described. In fact, the models of climate change here on Earth were developed in part by scientists, James Hansen especially, who were studying the atmosphere of Venus. They observed that visible light passes the atmosphere, hits the surface, and then is reradiated as heat that is then trapped by carbon dioxide. This process has a big influence on whether or not a planet is habitable.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“As of this writing, the Opportunity rover is still roving. It was designed to run ninety Martian days—just over three months—but it is still running, ten years later.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“Over billions of years, the planets exchange quite a bit of material. This is not speculation; this is fact. Planetary scientists have found pieces of Mars and the Moon here on Earth, and may have identified fragments of Venus and Mercury as well. Could life have made the journey from Earth to Mars, or vice versa? This idea has come to be called transpermia, sending life across interplanetary or even interstellar space.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“Since 1995, astronomers have found nearly two thousand confirmed planets around other stars. Some of these planets are similar to Earth in size and mass. About two dozen of them orbit in the habitable zone, the distance from their stars where temperatures are potentially suitable to our kind of life. Extrapolating broadly, there may be 50 billion habitable planets in our galaxy. Nowadays, there is an entire field of science known as astrobiology—the study of life among the stars.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“In my opinion, the sexiest thing about a woman is her smile. If the woman doesn’t smile, or doesn’t smile well, men will not dig her. They will look for other women, who smile well. What’s involved in smiling? Good teeth, attentiveness, engaging eyes, and the ability to be happy. Each of these is an apparently inheritable trait.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918–1919, some 50 million people were killed by something far too small to even see, let alone hunt and destroy. The Black Death of the fourteenth century may have killed up to 200 million. You and I are descendants of people who just happen to have the genes to fight off deadly viruses and bacteria.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“Researchers developed ways to extract genes from one species and insert them into the genetic code of another—a technique that can, among other things, cause invading insects to kill themselves. The organisms produced in this fashion, which we eat, are called Genetically Modified Organisms or GMOs, sometimes Genetically Engineered Organisms (GEOs) or, for this chapter, Genetically Modified Food (GMF).”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“Furthermore, because of their completely different chemical mechanisms, viruses are unaffected by the drugs that target bacteria. It has to be a bacterium that’s infecting you for an antibiotic to do any good. (Don’t ask your doctor for an antibiotic if you have the flu; it won’t do a thing except help breed more dangerous bacteria.) Viruses have no cell walls to breach.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“With each step in the process, we used the method of science: Observe. Hypothesize. Predict. Experiment. Compare what you expected with what really happened.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“By most reasonable estimates, there are about a million-trillion-trillion, or 1030, of them (ten followed by 30 zeroes) here on this planet. There are more bacteria on Earth than there are stars in the observable universe.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“Biologists discovered the microbiome just over the past couple of decades. They are still puzzling out how the microbes in your body help keep you healthy and well nourished. A person’s microbiome might even be an important factor in controlling his or her obesity.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“Even the majority of the cells in your body are microorganisms. They outnumber the cells of your body by 10 to 1. Those microbes are living, metabolizing chemicals, producing waste chemicals, and interacting with each other. Collectively, they are known as your microbiome. You are their ecosystem. It’s wild.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

“With the little changes that happen with reproduction, the configuration of your DNA and your genes can change for you and others in the population of your kind. This is called “genetic drift.” If the genes drift a little at the same time that there’s a change in the environment, the drifted genes may be the only ones that make it through. This is an example of microevolution—a change in the genetic mix within a species or population. You can think of it simply as evolution by small changes over short times.”
― Bill Nye, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation