The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.

I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed.

This oak tree and me, we're made of the same stuff.

Except for fools and madmen, everyone knows that nuclear war would he an unprecedented human catastrophe.

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

I hold that popularization of science is successful if, at first, it does no more than spark the sense of wonder.