Philosophers and scientists confidently offer up traits said to be uniquely human, and the monkeys and apes casually knock them down -- toppling the pretension that humans constitute some sort of biological aristocracy among the beings on Earth.

We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands. The loom of time and space works the most astonishing transformations of matter.

Arguments from authority carry little weight – authorities have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.

You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility.

Goddard represented a unique combination of visionary dedication and technological brilliance. He studied physics because he needed physics to get to Mars. In reading the notebooks of Robert Goddard, I am struck by how powerful his exploratory and scientific motivations were - and how influental speculative ideas, even erroneous ones, can be on the shaping of the future.

Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth. But up there in the Cosmos an inescapable perspective awaits.