A millennium before Europeans were willing to divest themselves of the Biblical idea that the world was a few thousand years old, the Mayans were thinking of millions and the Hindus billions.
Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away.
I hold that popularization of science is successful if, at first, it does no more than spark the sense of wonder.
Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid.
Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.
We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged.
One of the greatest gifts adults can give – to their offspring and to their society – is to read to children.
There is every reason to think that in the coming years Mars and its mysteries will become increasingly familiar to the inhabitants of the Planet Earth.
Humans – who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals – have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain.
If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds. Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.
We have heard the rationales offered by the nuclear superpowers. We know who speaks for the nations. But who speaks for the human species? Who speaks for Earth?
There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.
Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.
The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.
The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.
There are wonders enough out there without our inventing any.
The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves – without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster.
Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage – at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.
One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.
My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about it. An agnostic is somebody who doesn’t believe in something until there is evidence for it, so I’m agnostic.