Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.

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.

There is honey in this land sweeter than any I know of, and I have cut cane in places where the dirt itself tasted like sugar, so that's saying a heap.

Faith consists not in ignorance but in knowledge and that not only of God but also of the divine will.

It doesn't take talent to work hard.

My argument is that history is made by men and women, just as it can also be unmade and rewritten, always with various silence and elisions, always with shapes imposed and disfigurements tolerated.

A man who claims to be fearless is an idiot or a liar.

I think I learned a lot from reading in general - even from reading badly written books.

Why does every black person in the movies have to play a servant? How about a black person walking up the steps of a courthouse carrying a briefcase?

I go back and forth as to whether I think Nancy Pelosi's really this dumb or not. Although, every time I hear her speak I get closer and closer to concluding that she is this dumb.

I guess it's the age group of students; You are questioning life. Then there are those who actually see their problems reflected in it.

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique.