Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.
Our passion for learning. . . is our tool for survival.
The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.
The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos.
Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.
An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.
We were wanderers from the beginning.
Pleasure once tasted satisfies less than the desire experienced for its torments.
We are in an unusual predicament as a global civilization. The maximum that is politically feasible, even the maximum that is politically imaginable right now, still falls short of the minimum that is scientifically and ecologically necessary.
If you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe.
To me, there is no such thing as a trash duck. There are ducks that are a lot better to eat than other ducks. But a duck is just that.