“Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.”

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.

Science is a way to not fool ourselves.

Writing is the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another.

Writing is the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another.

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.

I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.

The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power – we must have a dispersion of power.

Magnetic lines of force convey a far better and purer idea than the phrase magnetic current or magnetic flood: it avoids the assumption of a current or of two currents and also of fluids or a fluid, yet conveys a full and useful pictorial idea to the mind.

It hurts my head, but it’s fine because it’s something I do every day. You can’t avoid the gymnastics questions.

Rock bottom is a crisis. And everyone wants to avoid crisis. But what ‘crisis’ means literally is ‘to sift’ – like a child who goes to the beach, lifts up the sand, and watches all the sand fall away, hoping that there’s treasure left over. That’s what crisis does.

Every job will demand some sacrifice. The key is to avoid unnecessary sacrifice.

People avoid action. Often because they are afraid of the consequences, for action means risk and danger. Danger seems terrible from a distance; it is not so bad if you have a close look at it

I dislike death, however, there are some things I dislike more than death. Therefore, there are times when I will not avoid danger.