Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.

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.

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.

Whatever the reason you're on Mars, I'm glad you're there, and I wish I was with you.

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.

An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth - scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books - might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity, and consumerism. We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it.

As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and the sky.