Virtually every major technological advance in the history of the human species – back to the invention of stone tools and the domestication of fire – has been ethically ambiguous.
At the extremes it is difficult to distinguish pseudoscience from rigid, doctrinaire religion.
We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of this memory is called the library.
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors.
Human beings grew up in forests; we have a natural affinity for them. How lovely a tree is, straining toward the sky.
Religions are often state-protected nurseries of pseudoscience, although there’s no reason why religions have to play that role. In a way, it’s an artefact from times long gone.
How smart does a chimp have to be before killing him constitutes murder?
There are in fact 100 billion galaxies, each of which contain something like a 100 billion stars. Think of how many stars, and planets, and kinds of life there may be in this vast and awesome universe.
It would be wryly interesting if in human history the cultivation of marijuana led generally to the invention of agriculture, and thereby to civilization.
Science is more than a body of knowledge. It’s a way of thinking: a way of skeptically interrogating the universe.
Is mankind alone in the universe? Or are there somewhere other intelligent beings looking up into their night sky from very different worlds and asking the same kind of question?
Billions and billions.
What an astonishing thing a book is.
Even through your hardest days, remember we are all made of stardust.
We are made of star-stuff. Our bodies are made of star-stuff. There are pieces of star within us all.
Science is a collaborative enterprise, spanning the generations. When it permits us to see the far side of some new horizon, we remember those who prepared the way – seeing for them also.
I find science so much more fascinating than science fiction. It also has the advantage of being true.
There are lots of ways to communicate what we know, but few ways to communicate what we feel. Music is one way to communicate emotions.
Whatever the reason you’re on Mars, I’m glad you’re there, and I wish I was with you.
The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood.