“Science is an attempt, largely successful, to understand the world, to get a grip on things, to get hold of ourselves, to steer a safe course.”

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.

One of the greatest gifts adults can give – to their offspring and to their society – is to read to children.

I’ve always thought an agnostic is an atheist without the courage of his convictions.

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.

I have lived too many lives to be only one thing, and instead of attempting to mesh them into a form of a human being, I have decided to love every jagged edge of mine.

No more good must be attempted than the nation can bear.

I tried to be diplomatic, but mostly I just lied a lot.

I try to stay as private as possible; I know that’s difficult, especially playing here in New York, but I make an attempt at it.

Too often we attempt to work for God to the limit of our incompetency, rather than to the limit of God’s omnipotency.

The veneration, wherewith Men are imbued for what they call Nature, has been a discouraging impediment to the Empire of Man over the inferior Creatures of God. For many have not only look’d upon it, as an impossible thing to compass, but as something impious to attempt.

I did things with the microphone stand that no-one else has attempted to do.

You won’t believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better.