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.

People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.

Science sent the Hubble telescope out into space, so it could capture light and the absence thereof, from the very beginning of time. And the telescope really did that. So now we know that there was once absolutely nothing, such a perfect nothing that there wasn’t even nothing or once.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.

I’ve never seen myself as a star. I never call myself a celebrity or a superstar, whatever.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn’t do to upset one’s own vanity.

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

I’m honest enough to say I don’t know everything. You know, I don’t. I don’t understand all of God. I don’t understand, you know, some kind of why bad things happen.

Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues.

People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.

There is no conflict between the ideal of religion and the ideal of science, but science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine.

I definitely don’t plead guilty to being a heartthrob.

Even sleepers are workers and collaborators in what goes on in the Universe.

Fondly we think we honor merit then, When we but praise ourselves in other men.

Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has a lot to be modest about.

I wouldn’t say that I am one of the greatest dancers, but I am really quite good at what I do.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

The universe is very large, and its boundaries are not known very well, but it is still possible to define some kind of a radius to be associated with it.

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to mankind, neither is he able to see mankind unrelated to life, nor life unrelated to the universe.

I believe God wants you to have money to pay your bills, send your kids to college and do charity work and build orphanages. There’s the teaching that we’re supposed to be poor to show that we’re humble. I don’t buy that. I think we’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to excel.

If the grandfather of the grandfather of Jesus had known what was hidden within him, he would have stood humble and awe-struck before his soul.

It has been discovered that all the world is made of the same atoms, that the stars are of the same stuff as ourselves. It then becomes a question of where our stuff came from. Not just where did life come from, or where did the earth come from, but where did the stuff of life and of the earth come from?

I never get too high on my stardom or what I can do.

There was my name up in lights. I said, ‚God, somebody’s made a mistake.‘ But there it was, in lights. And I sat there and said, ‚Remember, you’re not a star.‘ Yet there it was up in lights.

We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.

The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the Named is the mother of all things.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream.

I understood at a very early age that in nature, I felt everything I should feel in church but never did. Walking in the woods, I felt in touch with the universe and with the spirit of the universe.

We learned about gratitude and humility – that so many people had a hand in our success, from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean… and we were taught to value everyone’s contribution and treat everyone with respect.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance.

You know, when I have a bad game, it continues to humble me and know that, you know, you still have work to do and you still have a lot of people to impress.

I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources and the difficulty of my life… I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a vagabond.

I said I was ‚The Greatest,‘ I never said I was the smartest!

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.

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.

In a way, the whole tangible universe itself is a vast residue, a skeleton of countless lives that have germinated in it and have left it, leaving behind them only a trifling, infinitesimal part of their riches.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

I have never regarded myself as a hero, but Tenzing undoubtedly was.

It’s time for the human race to enter the solar system.

Many people look at me and think they know me but they don’t at all. This is the real me. I am a humble person, a feeling person. A person who cares about others, who wants to help others.

A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.

It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.

Being humble matters.

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.

Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.

Love in all its subtleties is nothing more, and nothing less, than the more or less direct trace marked on the heart of the element by the psychical convergence of the universe upon itself.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

I want to know why the universe exists, why there is something greater than nothing.

I’m a religious woman. And I feel I have responsibility. I have no modesty at all. I’m even afraid of it – it’s a learned affectation and it’s just stuck on me like decals. Now I pray for humility because that comes from inside out.

The best of us must sometimes eat our words.