Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs – in time, in space, and in potential – the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.
We were wanderers from the beginning.
The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos.
Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions.
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.
There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths.
Be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.
The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan. Many people don’t like that statement, but few can argue with it.
Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
Every star may be a sun to someone.
The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.
Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.
Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others?
If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.
A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
Where we have strong emotions, we’re liable to fool ourselves.