We need to broaden our sympathies both in space and time - and perceive ourselves as part of a long heritage, and stewards for an immense future.

In future, children won't perceive the stars as mere twinkling points of light: they'll learn that each is a 'Sun', orbited by planets fully as interesting as those in our Solar system.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

It will not be humans who watch the sun's demise, six billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.

I think a few hundred years from now we'll start having the 'posthuman' era of different species.

It's better to read first rate science fiction than second rate science-it's a lot more fun, and no more likely to be wrong.

Science is a part of culture. Indeed, it is the only truly global culture because protons and proteins are the same all over the world, and it's the one culture we can all share.

I hope that by 2050 the entire solar system will have been explored and mapped by flotillas of tiny robotic craft.

I'm not myself religious but have no wish to insult or denigrate those who are.

Crucial to science education is hands-on involvement: showing, not just telling; real experiments and field trips and not just "virtual reality".

An insect is more complex than a star..and is a far greater challenge to understand.

The most practical solution is a good theory.

What's the point of being young if you're not going to make new things, I wonder?

Empathy frequently informs our earliest days with our infants as we try to figure out what they need, how to comfort and satisfy them.

I was really excited to have the opportunity to make Fiddler.

The Lord has given me to understand the value of at once confessing one's sins after their commission. By so doing we are always in the state of grace.

Governments never supply prosperity. At best, they can facilitate it, by allowing the free enterprise system to work. Usually they suppress it.

I'm not willing to risk more terrorist plots succeeding and more paedophiles going free.

If you could help millions of people, you can certainly make millions of dollars. I try to influence everyone I know to be a giver because the person that benefits most by giving is the giver.

Preserve the sayings of those people who are indifferent to the world. They say only that what Allah wishes them to say.