All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

The cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff

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

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

A multitude of aspects of the natural world that were considered miraculous only a few generations ago are now thoroughly understood in terms of physics and chemistry.

The Universe forces those who live in it to understand it. Those creatures who find everyday experience a muddled jumble of events with no predictability, no regularity, are in grave peril. The Universe belongs to those who, at least to some degree, have figured it out.

If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there's nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?