Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. And in the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy.
Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth.
If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize that we were alone?
The simplest thought, like the concept of the number one, has an elaborate logical underpinning.
Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation.
Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers.
I would be very ashamed of my civilization if we did not try to find out if there is life in outer space.
Modern Darwinism makes it abundantly clear that many less ruthless traits, some not always admired by robber barons and Fuhrers – altruism, general intelligence, compassion – may be the key to survival.
A multitude of aspects of the natural world that were considered miraculous only a few generations ago are now thoroughly understood in terms of physics and chemistry.
If we’re capable of conjuring up terrifying monsters in childhood, why shouldn’t some of us, at least on occasion, be able to fantasize something similar, something truly horrifying, a shared delusion, as adults?
When you look more generally at life on Earth, you find that it is all the same kind of life. There are not many different kinds; there’s only one kind. It uses about fifty fundamental biological building blocks, organic molecules.
These days there seems to be nowhere left to explore, at least on the land area of the Earth. Victims of their very success, the explorers now pretty much stay home.
All inquires carry with them some element of risk. There is no guarantee that the universe will conform to our predispositions.
The gears of poverty, ignorance, hopelessness and low self-esteem interact to create a kind of perpetual failure machine that grinds down dreams from generation to generation. We all bear the cost of keeping it running. Illiteracy is its linchpin.
We live at a moment when our relationships to each other, and to all other beings with whom we share this planet, are up for grabs.
Philosophers and scientists confidently offer up traits said to be uniquely human, and the monkeys and apes casually knock them down – toppling the pretension that humans constitute some sort of biological aristocracy among the beings on Earth.
Discussing the possibilities of extraterrestrial life: I would love it even if they were short, sullen, grumpy and sexually obsessed. But there just isn’t any good evidence.
This oak tree and me, we’re made of the same stuff.
My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, our curiosity and intelligence is provided by such a God. We would be unappreciative of that gift if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves.
Except for fools and madmen, everyone knows that nuclear war would he an unprecedented human catastrophe.