Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties.

The essential fact is that all the pictures which science now draws of nature, and which alone seem capable of according with observational facts, are mathematical pictures.

Put three grains of sand inside a vast cathedral, and the cathedral will be more closely packed with sand than space is with stars.

The universe can best be pictured as consisting of pure thought, the thought of what for want of a better word we must describe as a mathematical thinker.

Science should leave off making pronouncements: the river of knowledge has too often turned back on itself.

To travel hopefully is better than to arrive.

...to many it is not knowledge but the quest for knowledge that gives greater interest to thought-to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.

All discussion of the ultimate nature of things must necessarily be barren unless we have some extraneous standards against which to compare them.

The human race, whose intelligence dates back only a single tick of the astronomical clock, could hardly hope to understand so soon what it all means.

The motion of the stars over our heads is as much an illusion as that of the cows, trees and churches that flash past the windows of our train.

One must stand stiller than still. On reverse time travel.

Treat everyone with politeness and kindness, not because they are nice, but because you are.

If virtue does not equal powers, powers will be misused.

I think fiction is about small ambition, small failed ambition.

Vichy proves one thing: if you don't want to know how low your fellow citizens can fall, and crawl, don't lose a war.

I know lots and lots and lots of vegetarians who think it's perfectly all right to kill animals for food to eat, but don't do it because they think all the ways in which it's done are wrong.

It's part of the fun of it to work with strong personalities.

Yet even differences prove helpful, where there are tolerance, charity and Truth.

I think about it all the time. I love filmmaking. Whether I'd be in front of the camera or behind the camera, I just love that world.

Weak leadership can wreck the soundest strategy

We must also recognize the new realities of modern warfare and the modern landscape of a battlefield.