The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos.

As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and the sky.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes-an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense.

I went to the librarian and asked for a book about stars.... And the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star but really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light.... The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. It was a kind of religious experience. There was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me.

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.

In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist's signature.