Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.

She had studied the universe all her life, but had overlooked its clearest message: For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.

We are star stuff harvesting sunlight.

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.

The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.

Their position seems to be that their God is so great he doesn't even have to exist.

Our God Is Alive and Well. Sorry About Yours.

It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign.

Science is only a Latin word for knowledge

The many sorrows of our recent history suggest that we humans have a learning disability.

The visions we offer our children shape the future. It _matters_ what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

I don't want to believe. I want to know.

Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe.

If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there's nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?

Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship.

In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie.

By looking far out into space we are also looking far back into time, back toward the horizon of the universe, back toward the epoch of the Big Bang.

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.

We are all star stuff.

We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands.

Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths.

We can't help it. Life looks for life.

Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.

The secrets of evolution, are time and death. There's an unbroken thread that stretches from those first cells to us.

If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate. ... Choose science.

Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value the may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.

And if the world does not in all respects correspond to our wishes, is this the fault of science, or of those who would impose their wishes on the world?

Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself

Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astounding universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy.

The whole idea of a democratic application of skepticism is that everyone should have the essential tools to effectively and constructively evaluate claims to knowledge.

All inquiries carry with them some element of risk.

The prediction I can make with the highest confidence is that the most amazing discoveries will be the ones we are not today wise enough to foresee.

I would suggest that science is, at least in my part, informed worship.

But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.

Science gropes and staggers toward improved understanding.

New generations grew to maturity wholly ignorant of the sky that had transfixed their ancestors and that had stimulated the modern age of science and technology.

The same few dozen organic molecules are used over and over again in biology for the widest variety of functions.

Liberation from superstition is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for science.

All science asks is to employ the same levels of skepticism we use in buying a used car or in judging the quality of analgesics or beer from their television commercials.

Especially where the implications of what we think we are seeing seem to be profound, we may not exercise adequate self-discipline and self-criticism.

The lure of the marvelous blunts our critical faculties.

Hallucinations may be a neglected low door in the wall to a scientific understanding of the sacred.

Whatever their neurological and molecular antecedents, hallucinations feel real. They are sought out in many cultures and considered a sign of spiritual enlightenment.

All of us long for a competent, uncorrupt, charismtatic leader. We will leap at the opportunity to support, to believe, to feel good.

When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shinning because of distant nuclear fusion.

And you are made of a hundred trillion cells. We are, each of us, a multitude.

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.

Being freed from superstition isn't enough for science to grow. One must also have the idea of interrogating Nature, of doing experiments.

In a world in transition, students and teachers both need to teach themselves one essential skill - learning how to learn.

[...] science carries us towards an understanding of how the world is, rather than how we would wish it to be [...]

We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be.

Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there's no turning back from science.

Why should God be so clear in the Bible and so obscure in the world?

They should have sent a poet.

National boundaries are as invisible as meridians of longitude, or the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The boundaries are arbitrary. The planet is real.

It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little about it.