Given any new technology for transmitting information, we seem bound to use it for great quantities of small talk. We are only saved by music from being overwhelmed by nonsense.

It is from the progeny of this parent cell that we all take our looks; we still share genes around, and the resemblance of the enzymes of grasses to those of whales is in fact a family resemblance.

The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.

Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.

In real life, every field of science is incomplete, and most of them - whatever the record of accomplishment during the last 200 years - are still in their very earliest stages.

We owe our lives to the sun... How is it, then, that we feel no gratitude?

The greatest single achievement of nature to date was surely the invention of the molecule DNA.

It is in our genes to understand the universe if we can, to keep trying even if we cannot, and to be enchanted by the act of learning all the way.

I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach into outer space on the Voyager spacecraft. But that would be boasting.

Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species.

We leave traces of ourselves wherever we go, on whatever we touch.

Nothing can be compared to the new life that the discovery of another country provides for a thoughtful person. Although I am still the same I believe to have changed to the bones.

If you let life pass you by now, it won't ever come back. You don't get another chance.

Some things become such a part of us that we forget them.

When you get some success, you want more. When you get one mountain climbed, you want to climb the next one.

I throw better than anybody in college and I can throw with anybody in the pros. There, that's what I think.

If you talk about people that lie, this Ted Cruz, this is the biggest liar I've ever seen.

It's quiet now. So quiet that can almost hear other people's dreams.

Dignity and love were never yet boon companions.

I think I've been really lucky to keep my career so varied, and to be open. There's safety in repetition, but there's also a trap there.

Shall remain! Hear you this Triton of the minnows? Mark you His absolute 'shall'?