We are one species. We are starstuff.
Science is not perfect. It’s often misused; it’s only a tool, but it’s the best tool we have. Self-correcting, ever changing, applicable to everything: with this tool, we vanquish the impossible.
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.
The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.
The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.
Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.
Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you’re in love, you want to tell the world.
When you make the finding yourself – even if you’re the last person on Earth to see the light – you’ll never forget it.
All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.
After the earth dies, some 5 billion years from now, after it’s burned to a crisp, or even swallowed by the Sun, there will be other worlds and stars and galaxies coming into being – and they will know nothing of a place once called Earth.
The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
Preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
The total number of stars in the Universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth.
Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.
When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, that is the heart of science.
We are an intelligent species and the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel good. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.
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.
Science is more than a body of knowledge. It’s a way of thinking: a way of skeptically interrogating the universe.
We are made of star-stuff. Our bodies are made of star-stuff. There are pieces of star within us all.