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

I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this cosmos in which we float, like a mote of dust in the morning sky.

National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.

We can't help it. Life looks for life.

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.

Cleverly designed experiments are the key.

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.