Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.

Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

It is always good to know which ideas cannot be checked directly, but it is not necessary to remove them all. It is not true that we can pursue science completely by using only those concepts which are directly subject to experiment.

I resent the implication that I’m less of a musician and a worse person for not appreciating certain works.

I’m a workin‘ girl.

If I’d had good discipline, I might have gone into music.

It’s cool to be recognised by your peers.

Understand, when you eat meat, that something did die. You have an obligation to value it – not just the sirloin but also all those wonderful tough little bits.

The career of a sage is of two kinds: He is either honored by all in the world, Like a flower waving its head, Or else he disappears into the silent forest.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

If I had never ventured beyond being a stand-up comic, then I would be sitting in my house today working on my Leonardo DiCaprio impression.

I knew when my career was over. In 1965 my baseball card came out with no picture.

Sometimes I wish I had taken the Bob Dylan route and sang songs where my voice would not go out on me every night, so I could have a career if I wanted.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

There is so much that people take for granted.

It was 1996 and I was at a crossroads in my career. I had been working in Hollywood as a writer and was very unhappy. I had pitched an idea for a book some six months earlier, and the book packager, Joost Elffers, wanted me to write up a treatment for it.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.

Atoms are very special: they like certain particular partners, certain particular directions, and so on. It is the job of physics to analyze why each one wants what it wants.

I love life because what more is there?

The artist part of me always wants to be appreciated. I read every review. But I never wanted to seek validation by awards or anything controlled by politics.

I always thought money was something just to make me happy. But I’ve learned that I feel better being able to help my folks, ‚cause we never had nothing. So just to see them excited about my career is more of a blessing than me actually having it for myself.

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.

Human beings love poetry. They don’t even know it sometimes… whether they’re the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber… they’re listening to poetry.

Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.

The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don’t have.

Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It’s really counterintuitive.

I have no definite talent or trade, and how I stay alive is largely a matter of magic.

I read the ‚Old Testament‘ all the way through when I was about 13 and was horrified. A few months afterwards I read ‚The Origin Of Species‘, hallucinating very mildly because I was in bed with flu at the time. Despite that, or because of that, it all made perfect sense.

Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.

I happened to come along in the music business when there was no trend.

It may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful?

All I can do is try to create my own brand and have people appreciate me for that.

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.

I love my job, but it’s more than that: I need it.

I love everything about my job, except being away from the kids.

No decent career was ever founded on a public.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

It’s a small percentage of people who do the 80-hour-a-week high-powered career thing, and they’re almost all men. Why? Well, men are driven by socio-economic status more than women.

Remember that a gesture of friendship, no matter how small, is always appreciated.

I like policy. It’s why I decided to enter government. The other thing I like about government – you have good days, you have bad days, but you never have a boring day, and that’s important to me.

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.

Look folks, we know who built this country and we know who is going to rebuild it. It’s you. Instead of vilifying you, we should be thanking you. We owe you.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

All writers are going to have to learn more about science, because it’s such an interesting part of their environment.

Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? How does it all work? But they focus on different areas of life on earth.

Because in a split second, it’s gone.

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

When I was a kid, I thought movies just came from air. I thought they just appeared.

There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.

Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.

Nothing extraordinary happens to a cricketer if you time his career – which is very short.

I believe that my parents did wonderful things for us.

Fill the earth with your songs of gratitude.

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‚Boy, those were great old days.‘ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.