Is mankind alone in the universe? Or are there somewhere other intelligent beings looking up into their night sky from very different worlds and asking the same kind of question?

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.

Tess, will you marry me?" Toby laughed.

Anyone who thinks there's safety in numbers hasn't looked at the stock market pages.

People say to me, "You make fantastic films" and I say, "No, I make documentaries.

There have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal. Sometimes to do the right thing you have to break the law.

Then you must say to her, 'Madame, I observe that your heart is broken. Allow me to repair it for you.

Difference of opinion has never been sufficiently appreciated. It is the unexpected, the unknowable, the divine irrationality of life that saves us.

In our dreams we are able to fly . . . and that is a remembering of how we were meant to be.

Let us be grateful to Adam: he cut us out of the blessing of idleness and won for us the curse of labor.

Profound peace, spiritual consolation, love of God and love of all things in God - this is the sign that you are on this right path.

TV is where writers get to tell interesting stories. Because writers, for the most part, run television.