Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.

I believe that in every person is a kind of circuit which resonates to intellectual discovery-and the idea is to make that resonance work

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance , the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point of pale light.

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

We are, in a way, temporary ambulatory repositories for our nucleic acids. This does not deny our humanity; it does not prevent us from pursuing the good, the true and the beautiful. But it would be a great mistake to ignore where we have come from in our attempt to determine where we are going.

In a lot of scientists, the ratio of wonder to skepticism declines in time. That may be connected with the fact that in some fields-mathematics, physics, some others-the great discoveries are almost entirely made by youngsters.

Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the emotional hallmarks of our species.