Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.

For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?

What I can't create I don't understand

The "paradox" is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality "ought to be."

The basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual... the humility of the spirit.

We are lucky to live in an age in which we are still making discoveries.