It's been said that astronomy is a humbling and, I might add, a character-building experience.

Most of the people that I deal with are human. So I've had a lot of experience with that.

I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.

Today, we're still loaded down - and, to some extent, embarrassed - by ancient myths, but we respect them as part of the same impulse that has led to the modern, scientific kind of myth. But we now have the opportunity to discover, for the first time, the way the universe is in fact constructed as opposed to how we would wish it to be constructed.

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

I've written a number of books that have to do with the evolution of humans, human intelligence, human emotions.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Even these stars, which seem so numerous, are as sand, as dust - or less than dust - in the enormity of the space in which there is nothing.

The boundary between space and the earth is purely arbitrary. And I'll probably always be interested in this planet - it's my favorite.

No other planet in the solar system is a suitable home for human beings; it's this world or nothing. That's a very powerful perception.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.