It goes with a courageous intent to greet the universe as it really is, not to foist our emotional predispositions on it but to courageously accept what our explorations tell us.

Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors.

There is perhaps no better a demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.

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

Extraordinary observations require extraordinary evidence to make them believable.

The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its polarization: Us vs. Them - the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you're sensible, you'll listen to us; and if not, to hell with you. This is nonconstructive. It does not get our message across. It condemns us to permanent minority status.

It means nothing to be open to a proposition we don't understand.