Much of human history can, I think, be described as a gradual and sometimes painful liberation from provincialism, the emerging awareness that there is more to the world than was generally believed by our ancestors.

Our children long for realistic maps of the future that they can be proud of. Where are the cartographers of human purpose?

If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you.

What an astonishing thing a book is.

There are wonders enough out there without our inventing any.

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean.

I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.