Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
On the day that we do discover that we are not alone, our society may begin to evolve and transform in some incredible and wondrous new ways.
It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.
Absolute certainty will always elude us. We will always be mired in error. The most each generation can hope for is to reduce the error. . . .
Each of us is a tiny being, permitted to ride on the outermost skin of one of the smaller planets for a few dozen trips around the local star.
We, all of us, are what happens when a primordial mixture of hydrogen and helium evolves for so long that it begins to ask where it came from.
To ensure continuing prosperity in the global economy, nothing is more important than the development and application of knowledge and skills.
Sure, our three-pound brains might be inadequate to understand the universe. But perhaps they're just good enough to build something that can.
We became astronomers thinking we were studying the universe, and now we learn that we are just studying the 5 or 10 percent that is luminous.
We know very little about the universe. I personally don't believe it's uniform and the same everywhere. That's like saying the earth is flat.
In Mozambique, the story goes, monkeys do not talk, because they know if they utter even a single word some man will come and put them to work.
Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy.
Except for children (who don't know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spendtime wondering why nature is the way it is . . .
When permitted to listen to alternative opinions and engage in substantive debate, people have been known to change their minds. It can happen.
When I was a kid, which was just after Edison invented moving pictures, there were films that involved aliens coming to Earth for bad purposes.
'Eternal inflation,' as it's called - the endless generation of new universes - may be a hyper-cosmic imperative. It seems that it must happen.
I was taught the alphabet by my aunts before I was four years old, and I was reading the Bible in class and beginning geography when I was six.
We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'.
The usual rejoinder to someone who says 'They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Galileo' is to say 'But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown'.
Electrical force is defined as something which causes motion of electrical charge; an electrical charge is something which exerts electric force.
I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.
The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home.
Accommodation to change, the thoughtful pursuit of alternative futures are keys to the survival of civilization and perhaps of the human species.
Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it. Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse
Audiences forget facts, but they remember stories. Once you get past the jargon, the corporate world is an endless source of fascinating stories.
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.
Crucial to science education is hands-on involvement: showing, not just telling; real experiments and field trips and not just "virtual reality".
Collective human actions are transforming, even ravaging, the biosphere - perhaps irreversibly - through global warming and loss of biodiversity.
Crucial to science education is hands-on involvement: showing, not just telling; real experiments and field trips and not just 'virtual reality.'
[Otto Struve] made the remark once that he never looked at the spectrum of a star, any star, where he didn't find something important to work on.
Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.
We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands. The loom of time and space works the most astonishing transformations of matter.
Space and time may have a structure as intricate as the fauna of a rich ecosystem, but on a scale far larger than the horizon of our observations.
It's often better to read first-rate science fiction than second-rate science - it's far more stimulating, and perhaps no more likely to be wrong.
Men have had the vanity to pretend that the whole creation was made for them, while in reality the whole creation does not suspect their existence.
Our perceptions are fallible. We sometimes see what isn't there. We are prey to optical illusions. Occasionally we hallucinate. We are error-prone.
To base the unexplainabilty and the immense wonder of nature onto an other miracle, God, is unnecessary and not acceptable for any serious thinker.
'E.T.' was far-fetched. 'E.T.' was this wimpy-looking kid that came to Earth to pick some plants, but he came from the Andromeda Galaxy to do that.
James Edward Oliver might have been one of the great mathematicians of his time had he not been absolutely wanting in the power of continuous work.
The prediction I can make with the highest confidence is that the most amazing discoveries will be the ones we are not today wise enough to foresee.
The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit.
We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st.
By looking far out into space we are also looking far back into time, back toward the horizon of the universe, back toward the epoch of the Big Bang.
The evidence, so far at least and laws of Nature aside, does not require a Designer. Maybe there is one hiding, maddeningly unwilling to be revealed.
To read a book, to think it over, and to write out notes is a useful exercise; a book which will not repay some hard thought is not worth publishing.
We all need permission to do science, but for reasons that are deeply ingrained in history, this permission is more often given to men than to women.
There once was a brainy baboon, Who always breathed down a bassoon, For he said, It appears That in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune.
Humans - who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals - have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain.
Books tap the wisdom of our species -- the greatest minds, the best teachers -- from all over the world and from all our history. And they're patient.
It is remarkable that the elements diffused through the host of stars are some of those most closely connected with the living organisms of our globe.
Nature is so varied in its modes of action, so multiple in the manisftations of its power, that we have no night to set any limits to its capabilities.