Discovering a new explanation is inherently an act of creativity.

If you can’t program it, you haven’t understood it.

Despite the unrivaled empirical success of quantum theory, the very suggestion that it may be literally true as a description of nature is still greeted with cynicism, incomprehension, and even anger.

I don't think it would be a good idea for scientists to have more political power. Scientists as a group are more inclined to try to derive an ought from an is, than the population at large.

The brain is the only kind of object capable of understanding that the cosmos is even there, or why there are infinitely many prime numbers, or that apples fall because of the curvature of space-time, or that obeying its own inborn instincts can be morally wrong, or that it itself exists.

Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense...

Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow.