Quote collection
592 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things. It conveys awe for the intricate and subtle way in which the universe is put together."
"Wisdom lies in understanding our limitations."
"Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers. Be open to wonder and at the same time subject all claims to knowledge, without exception, to intense skeptical scrutiny. Be aware of human fallibility. Cherish your species and your planet."
"We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion-year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos."
"We are one species. We are starstuff."
"The Bill of Rights decoupled religion from the state, in part because so many religions were steeped in an absolutist frame of mind - each convinced that it alone had a monopoly on the truth and therefore eager for the state to impose this truth on others."
"In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist's signature."
"Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others? That’s who we are! We’re not who we say we are, we’re not who we want to be - we are the sum of the influence and impact that we have, in our lives, on others."
"When you look more generally at life on Earth, you find that it is all the same kind of life. There are not many different kinds; there's only one kind. It uses about fifty fundamental biological building blocks, organic molecules."
"The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit."
"We are, in the most profound sense, children of the Cosmos."
"Except for fools and madmen, everyone knows that nuclear war would he an unprecedented human catastrophe."
"Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world."
"We are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible and which are not."
"I set before you two ways: You can use your technology to destroy yourselves or to carry you to the planets and the stars. It's up to you."
"Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being."
"Indeed the reasoned criticism of a prevailing belief is a service to the proponents of that belief; if they are incapable of defending it, they are well advised to abandon it. This self-questioning and error-correcting aspect of the scientific method is its most striking property."
"The neurochemistry of the brain is astonishingly busy, the circuitry of a machine more wonderful than any devised by humans. But there is no evidence that its functioning is due to anything more than the 10(14) neural connections that build an elegant architecture of consciousness."
"Writing a novel is like trying to solve a very long mathematical equation. Changing anything can change everything else."
"It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men."