Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.

The old appeals to racial, sexual and religious chauvinism to rabid nationalist fervor, are beginning not to work.

Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.

Any sufficiently crisp question can be answered by a single binary digit-0 or 1, yes or no.

I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.

It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.