“Our ancestors lived out of doors. They were as familiar with the night sky as most of us are with our favorite television programs.”

We live on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

The visions we offer our children shape the future.

Nature is unsentimental. Death is built in.

We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands.

Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you’re in love, you want to tell the world.

Not all birds can fly. What separates the flyers from the walkers is the ability to take off.

Nature is always more subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to imagine.

When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shinning because of distant nuclear fusion.

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

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.

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

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Except in pure mathematics, nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly false).

Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.

Posterity who are to reap the blessings will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors.

Distinguished ancestors shed a powerful light on their descendants, and forbid the concealment either of their merits or of their demerits.

The glory of ancestors sheds a light around posterity; it allows neither good nor bad qualities to remain in obscurity.

Birth is a shadow. Courage, self-sustained, outlords succession’s phlegm, and needs no ancestors.

Religion and science have a common ancestor – ignorance.

Indeed, the crowning proof of their valour and their strength is that they keep up their superiority without harm to others.

Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.

So as you go into battle, remember your ancestors and remember your descendants.