A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars - billions upon billions of stars. Every star may be a sun to someone.

A millennium before Europeans were willing to divest themselves of the Biblical idea that the world was a few thousand years old, the Mayans were thinking of millions and the Hindus billions.

Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid.

Stars are phoenixes, rising from their own ashes.

The reappearance of the crescent moon after the new moon; the return of the Sun after a total eclipse, the rising of the Sun in the morning after its troublesome absence at night were noted by people around the world; these phenomena spoke to our ancestors of the possibility of surviving death. Up there in the skies was also a metaphor of immortality.

What an astonishing thing a book is.

We have entered, almost without noticing, an age of exploration and discovery unparalleled since the Renaissance.