I set up situations that involve abandoning control and finding out what happens.

When God sneezed, I didn’t know what to say.

Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself.

I’ve been everywhere in the world, seen everything, had everything a man can have.

I came to China to follow my star and to steep myself in the raw regions of the universe.

Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can’t ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment’s notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow – that’s vulnerability.

The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn’t even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we’d never have had the light bulb.

Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.

The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.

In this quest to seek and find God in all things, there is still an area of uncertainty. There must be. If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good.

Any East Coast road trip we have is very exciting, just being on the road, taking it all in.

A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.

A hustler has to deal with danger and risk. It’s part of the game. You cannot control it all, nor would you want to. Chaos, unknown factors are not something to be anxious about.

I’ve made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I’m convinced of the opposite.

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.

I was willing to accept what I couldn’t change.

I don’t have all the answers.

It is a hard thing to let go of mistakes we’ve made and sins. God wants us to do that because He knows the guilt and the condemnation will keep us from becoming who He has created us to be.

Life is too short for long-term grudges.

My knowledge of electrical subjects was not acquired in a methodical manner but was picked up from such books as I could get hold of and from such experiments as I could make with my own hands.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

Exploration by real people inspires us.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

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.

I want to marry Arline because I love her – which means I want to take care of her. That is all there is to it. I want to take care of her. I am anxious for the responsibilities and uncertainties of taking care of the girl I love.

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

Truth is a pathless land.

And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.

Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.

We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.

I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven’t tried that for a while. Maybe this time it’ll work.

Whatever is making you so angry, it’s time for you to give it to God and get over it.

To master a new technology, you have to play with it.

From the point of view of basic physics, the most interesting phenomena are, of course, in the new places, the places where the rules do not work – not the places where they do work! That is the way in which we discover new rules.

Life’s short. Anything could happen, and it usually does, so there is no point in sitting around thinking about all the ifs, ands and buts.

What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?

People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.

Children astound me with their inquisitive minds. The world is wide and mysterious to them, and as they piece together the puzzle of life, they ask ‚Why?‘ ceaselessly.

Here ends my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion. I have crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built. And, rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again.

I got into science fiction by being interested in astronomy first.

The universe is wider than our views of it.

There are many things that happen every day that we could murmur about if we let ourselves go there. But they really aren’t worth the effort it takes to get upset and gripe about it.

I try to teach my heart not to want things it can’t have.

Any man can call time out, but no man can say how long the time out will be.

A zero-gravity flight is a first step toward space travel.

The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

When trying to remember my share in the glow of the eternal present, in the smile of God, I return to my childhood, too, for that is where the most significant discoveries turn up.

I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.

There’s no point in making predictions. It’s not worth speculating because nothing is set in stone and things change all the time in football. Today there are opportunities that no one knows if they will come round again in the future.

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

My son likes to go see mines and electric plants, or the Large Hadron Collider, and we’ve had a chance to see a lot of interesting stuff.

Until 1914 I loved to travel; I often went to Italy and once spent a few months in India. Since then I have almost entirely abandoned travelling, and I have not been outside of Switzerland for over ten years.

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

I think all documentaries leave out areas of people’s lives. Which is good. There are areas that need not be explored.

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

This is the first age that’s ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.

One of the things you’re doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right.