“Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.”

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.

The price we pay for anticipation of the future is anxiety about it.

We can’t help it. Life looks for life.

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.

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

There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths.

Those at too great a distance may, I am well are, mistake ignorance for perspective.

Arguments from authority carry little weight, authorities have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid.

I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.

Don’t judge everyone else by your own limited experience.

The total number of stars in the Universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth.

People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons.

There are as many atoms in one molecule of DNA as there are stars in a typical galaxy.

Stars are phoenixes, rising from their own ashes.

Everything is ecstasy inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind it is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever.

There is a certain ecstasy in wanting things you can’t get.

The most fortunate are those who have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy.

It wasn’t just love. It was pure ecstasy at its finest.

Find ecstasy within yourself. It is not out there. It is in your innermost flowering. The one you are looking for is you.

The ecstasy is so short but the forgetting is so long.

The giving and receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.

Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.