“If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.”

Stars are phoenixes, rising from their own ashes.

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

Where we have strong emotions, we’re liable to fool ourselves.

Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.

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

An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God.

The only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.

Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.

If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.

Your god is too small for my universe.

A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars – billions upon billions of stars. Every star may be a sun to someone.

One of the great commandments of science is: Mistrust arguments from authority.

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

I don’t want to believe. I want to know.

If we ruin the earth, there is no place else to go.

The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage.

I cannot live without books.

A house that has a library in it has a soul.

Reading the Martin Luther King story, that little comic book, set me on the path that I’m on today.

If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.

A kid can never have too many books!

The prime function of the children’s book writer is to write a book that is so absorbing, exciting, funny, fast and beautiful that the child will fall in love with it.

I tried every diet in the book. I tried some that weren’t in the book. I tried eating the book. It tasted better than most of the diets.

Books are like mirrors: if a fool looks in, you cannot expect a genius to look out.