I think it quite likely that we are the only civilization within several hundred light years; otherwise we would have heard radio waves.

Every day I try to be in communication with the universe in an unconscious way.

Space has always fascinated me. As a young boy looking up at the stars, I found it impossible to resist thinking what was out there and if I ever would experience space first-hand.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.

If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

The Moon Village concept has a nice property in that it basically just says, ‚Look, everybody builds their own lunar outpost, but let’s do it close to each other.‘ That way… you can go over to the European Union lunar outpost and say, ‚I’m out of eggs. What have you got?‘

That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

Iraq is no diversion. It is a place where civilization is taking a decisive stand against chaos and terror, we must not waver.

When we understand string theory, we will know how the universe began. It won’t have much effect on how we live, but it is important to understand where we come from and what we can expect to find as we explore.

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

The Eagle has landed.

One civilization after another has been wrecked upon the attempt to secure sufficient leadership from a single group or class.

A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music – these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence.

At first when I heard about climate change, I was a climate denier. I didn’t think it was happening. Because if there really was an existential crisis like that, that would threaten our civilisation, we wouldn’t be focusing on anything else. That would be our first priority. So I didn’t understand how that added up.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

The fastest manned vehicle in history was Apollo 10. It reached 25,000 mph.

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

This is the truth: as from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again.

I read ‚The High Frontier‘ in high school. I read it multiple times, and I was already primed. As soon as I read it, it made sense to me. It seemed very clear that planetary surfaces were not the right place for an expanding civilization inside our solar system.

You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on… So it’s a fixer-upper of a planet.

Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.

America has tossed its cap over the wall of space.

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the ‚Not Me,‘ that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, ‚Nature.‘

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.

My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars – this is very important – so you don’t have to carry the return fuel when you go there.

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

Unlike Europe, China can’t be intimidated. Europe backs down if the United States looks at it the wrong way. But China, they’ve been there for 3,000 years and are paying no attention to the barbarians and don’t see any need to.

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space.

Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

To be more childlike, you don’t have to give up being an adult. The fully integrated person is capable of being both an adult and a child simultaneously. Recapture the childlike feelings of wide-eyed excitement, spontaneous appreciation, cutting loose, and being full of awe and wonder at this magnificent universe.

To the dumb question, ‚Why me?‘ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‚Why not?‘

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza’s God, it won’t love us in return.

Some of our earliest writing, in cuneiform, was about who owes what.

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.

It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.

The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.

The human race may be the only intelligent beings in the galaxy.

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

Space is almost infinite. As a matter of fact, we think it is infinite.

We get the exciting result that the total energy of the universe is zero. Why this should be so is one of the great mysteries – and therefore one of the important questions of physics. After all, what would be the use of studying physics if the mysteries were not the most important things to investigate?

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Everything is perfect in the universe – even your desire to improve it.

Space ails us moderns: we are sick with space.

The people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilization.

Even these stars, which seem so numerous, are as sand, as dust – or less than dust – in the enormity of the space in which there is nothing.

The revolutionary breakthrough will come with rockets that are fully and rapidly reusable. We will never conquer Mars unless we do that. It’ll be too expensive. The American colonies would never have been pioneered if the ships that crossed the ocean hadn’t been reusable.

Love is an adventure and a conquest. It survives and develops, like the universe itself, only by perpetual discovery.

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.