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?

I think being an atheist is something you are, not something you do.

I was terrible in English. I couldn’t stand the subject. It seemed to me ridiculous to worry about whether you spelled something wrong or not, because English spelling is just a human convention – it has nothing to do with anything real, anything from nature.

OK, so what’s the speed of dark?

I always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn’t that spectacular.

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.

Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration.

Science is magic that works.

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.

Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

As scientists, we step on the shoulders of science, building on the work that has come before us – aiming to inspire a new generation of young scientists to continue once we are gone.

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

Science is nothing but perception.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

The Milky Way is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters.

Infinites, when considered absolutely without any restriction or limitation, are neither equal nor unequal, nor have any certain proportion one to another, and therefore, the principle that all infinites are equal is a precarious one.

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

If I see a mountain, I just pick up and hike it.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it’s very different from most of the ones I’ve had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.

Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

We think that life develops spontaneously on Earth, so it must be possible for life to develop on suitable planets elsewhere in the universe. But we don’t know the probability that a planet develops life.

Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend the world.

Nothing in life is promised except death.

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.

I write some country music. There’s a song called ‚I Hope You Dance.‘ Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.

An overflow of good converts to bad.

The more violent the storm, the quicker it passes.

The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.

I don’t think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Life is abundant, and life is beautiful. And it’s a good place that we’re all in, you know, on this earth, if we take care of it.

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

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.

Such as we are made of, such we be.

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.