An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth - scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books - might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity, and consumerism. We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it.

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations.

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

Understanding is a kind of ecstasy

Science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking: a way of skeptically interrogating the universe.

We are star stuff harvesting sunlight.