“Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.”

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.

Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.

Heartbreak does not have to be a meaningless experience. For many, it is a spiritual catalyst – a pathway to awakening to ones deepest desires for love, purpose and connection.

We shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.

Heartbreak does not have to be a meaningless experience. For many, it is a spiritual catalyst – a pathway to awakening to ones deepest desires for love, purpose and connection.

Part of spiritual and emotional maturity is recognizing that it’s not like you’re going to try to fix yourself and become a different person. You remain the same person, but you become awakened.

Breakups have a way of shaking us awake and helping us see what we really want vs. what we are willing to settle for.

Sometimes it takes a heartbreak to shake us awake & help us see we are worth so much more than we’re settling for.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.

We each need to make our lion’s roar – to persevere with unshakable courage when faced with all manner of doubts and sorrows and fears – to declare our right to awaken.