I find science so much more fascinating than science fiction. It also has the advantage of being true.

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

The near side of a galaxy is tens of thousands of light-years closer to us than the far side; thus we see the front as it was tens of thousands of years before the back. But typical events in galactic dynamics occupy tens of millions of years, so the error in thinking of an image of a galaxy as frozen in one moment of time is small.

You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe

There is today-in a time when old beliefs are withering-a kind of philosophical hunger, a need to know who we are and how we got here. It is an on-going search, often unconscious, for a cosmic perspective for humanity

If we say that God has always been, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always been?

Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage - at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.