Humans are very good at dreaming, although you'd never know it from your television.

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.

It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.

Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition.

The desire to be connected with the cosmos reflects a profound reality, but we are connected; not in the trivial ways that astrology promises, but in the deepest ways.

What an astonishing thing a book is.

It seems madness to say, 'We're worried that they're going to become addicted to marijuana' -- there's no evidence whatever that it's an addictive drug, but even if it were, these people are dying, what are we saving them from?