When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shinning because of distant nuclear fusion.
I would suggest that science is, at least in my part, informed worship.
[an encounter in space] "Some celestial event. No--no words--no words to describe it. Poetry! They should have sent a poet. So beautiful. So beautiful...I had no idea. I had no idea.
There were many women in the Soviet scientific community, proportionately more so than in the United States. But they tended to occupy menial middle-level positions, and male Soviet scientists, like t...
The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.
Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.
Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.
But, Jefferson worried that the people - and the argument goes back to Thucydides and Aristotle - are easily misled. He also stressed, passionately and repeatedly, that it was essential for the people...
If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.
For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nea...
You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.
Some information is classified legitimately; as with military hardware, secrecy sometimes really is in the national interest. Further, military, political, and intelligence communities tend to value s...
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.
National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue...
The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves - without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster.
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then thos...