“The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.”

Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship.

What an astonishing thing a book is.

We all have a thirst for wonder. It’s a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it.

To live in the hearts we leave behind is to live forever.

And you are made of a hundred trillion cells. We are, each of us, a multitude.

Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos.

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

We are all stardust.

Be grateful everyday for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.

I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

I would suggest that science is, at least in my part, informed worship.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

I don’t think the people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in its true light till some other argument is resorted to other than moral persuasion.

Talk to each other. Never go to bed when you’re angry with each other. Lady Antonia Frasier who was married to Harold Pinter said they never went to bed on an argument.

If you need to invoke your academic pedigree or job title for people to believe what you say, then you need a better argument.

When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When you have neither, holler.

Prejudice, not being founded on reason, cannot be removed by argument.

Again the message to experimentalists is: Be sensible but don’t be impressed too much by negative arguments. If at all possible, try it and see what turns up. Theorists almost always dislike this sort of approach.

Kindness is very indigestible. It disagrees with very proud stomachs.

In a debate, rather pull to pieces the argument of thy antagonists than offer him any of thy own; for thus thou wilt fight him in his own country.