The greatest achievements in the science of this [twentieth] century are themselves the sources of more puzzlement than human beings have ever experienced. Indeed, it is likely that the twentieth century will be looked back at as the time when science provided the first close glimpse of the profundity of human ignorance. We have not reached solutions; we have only begun to discover how to ask questions.

For total greed, rapacity, heartlessness, and irresponsibility there is nothing to match a nation.

The earliest sensation at the onset of illness, often preceding the recognition of identifiable symptoms, is apprehension. Something has gone wrong, and a glimpse of mortality shifts somewhere deep in the mind. It is the most ancient of our fears.

I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach into outer space on the Voyager spacecraft. But that would be boasting.

Given the opportunity, under the right conditions, two cells from wildly different sources, a yeast cell, say, and a chicken erythrocyte, will touch, fuse, and the two nuclei will then fuse as well, and the new hybrid cell will now divide into monstrous progeny. Naked cells, lacking self-respect, do not seem to have any sense of self.

We owe our lives to the sun... How is it, then, that we feel no gratitude?

The gift of language is the single human trait that marks us all genetically, setting us apart from the rest of life.