Except for children (who don't know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spendtime wondering why nature is the way it is . . .

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

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.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

I don't want to believe. I want to know.

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

You have to know the past to understand the present.

Dignity is pride’s barometer.

Respect is the lifeblood of progress, and the safe harbour of humanity's great aspirations

-but what people expect can change you in the end.

Dylan's relationship with Johnny Cash was the biggest influence on Nashville in my lifetime - they opened up country music.

We were always dead against the war.

It is impossible to reign innocently.

Not everyone realises that to write a really good piece of journalism is at least as demanding intellectually as the achievement of any scholar.

The thing most people don't pick up when they become an entrepreneur is that it never ends. It's 24/7.

For me, if the music is good, whether the artist is famous or unknown, I love being part of the music and contributing what I can to the bass end.

Base is the slave that pays.