The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species.

The words "question" and "quest" are cognates. Only through inquiry can we discover truth.

We are an intelligent species and the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel good. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.

If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.

For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner ... on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. ... That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that.

But nature is always more subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to imagine.

The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood