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.

The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.

Stars are phoenixes, rising from their own ashes.

If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds. Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.

You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe

Atoms are mainly empty space. Matter is composed chiefly of nothing.

The fact that someone says something doesn't mean it's true. Doesn't mean they're lying, but it doesn't mean it's true.