Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it. Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse

Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away.

The Bill of Rights decoupled religion from the state, in part because so many religions were steeped in an absolutist frame of mind - each convinced that it alone had a monopoly on the truth and therefore eager for the state to impose this truth on others.

Stars are phoenixes, rising from their own ashes.

Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.

There is perhaps no better a demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.

The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars.