Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Except in pure mathematics, nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly false).
Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world.
[Kepler] preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, and that is the heart of science.
Not all birds can fly. What separates the flyers from the walkers is the ability to take off.
Science is merely an extremely powerful method of winnowing what's true from what feels good.
It's been said that astronomy is a humbling and, I might add, a character-building experience.
At the extremes it is difficult to distinguish pseudoscience from rigid, doctrinaire religion.
We are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible and which are not.
For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations.
We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged.
[One's] inability to invalidate your hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true.
But nature is always more subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to imagine.
The simplest thought, like the concept of the number one, has an elaborate logical underpinning.
Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group.
In all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.
If we do not speak for Earth, who will? If we are not committed to our own survival, who will be?
The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.
There are more potential combinations of DNA [physical forms] than there are atoms in the universe.
Those who seek power at any price detect a societal weakness, a fear that they can ride into office.
For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness.
The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses.
It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.
I don't know the answer. Maybe no one knows. Maybe when you grow up, you'll be the first to find out.
We are made of star-stuff. Our bodies are made of star-stuff. There are pieces of star within us all.
Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.
I find science so much more fascinating than science fiction. It also has the advantage of being true.
In the vastness of the Cosmos there must be other civilizations far older and more advanced than ours.
I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign.
If we say that God has always been, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always been?
The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.
The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.
Except for fools and madmen, everyone knows that nuclear war would he an unprecedented human catastrophe.
Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe.
We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.
I would be very ashamed of my civilization if we did not try to find out if there is life in outer space.
For years I've been stressing with regard to UFOs that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie.
I believe that the extraordinary should be pursued. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shinning because of distant nuclear fusion.
One of the greatest gifts adults can give - to their offspring and to their society - is to read to children.
If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize that we were alone?
The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science.
I've written a number of books that have to do with the evolution of humans, human intelligence, human emotions.
Organic as a dandelion seed, [the ship of our imagination] will carry us to worlds of dreams and worlds of facts
I hold that popularization of science is successful if, at first, it does no more than spark the sense of wonder.
There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths.
Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.
We have entered, almost without noticing, an age of exploration and discovery unparalleled since the Renaissance.
The old appeals to racial, sexual and religious chauvinism to rabid nationalist fervor, are beginning not to work.
Science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking: a way of skeptically interrogating the universe.