They [scientists of centuries past] call on God only from the lonely and precarious edge of incomprehension. Where they feel certain about their explanations, however, God gets hardly a mention.

'Boldly going where hundreds have gone before' does not make headlines.

If Earth ever suffers a runaway greenhouse effect (like what has happened on Venus), then our atmosphere would trap excess amounts of solar energy, the air temperature would rise, and the oceans would swiftly evaporate into the atmosphere as they sustained a rolling boil. This would be bad.

I want upon death to be buried, just like in the old days, where I decompose by the action of microorganisms, and I am dined upon by any form of creeping animal or root system that sees fit to do so.... I will have recycled back to the universe at least some of the energy that I have taken from it. And in so doing, at the conclusion of my scientific adventures, I will have come closer to the heavens than to Earth.

We're quite happy with our Big Bang description of cosmic origins. But actually, the Big Bang accounts for what happened only after the beginning. The beginning itself, and especially what happened before, remains the biggest mystery of all.

I think the material that inspires artists is the fabric of the soul of civilization.

Not only are we in the universe, the universe is in us. I don't know of any deeper spiritual feeling than what that brings upon me.