The most remarkable discovery in all of astronomy is that the stars are made of atoms of the same kind as those on the earth.

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

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

Not all those who wander are lost.

Well, I think indigenous peoples have ways of living on the Earth that they’ve had forever. And they’ve been overrun by organized religion, which has had a lot of money and power.

It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.

Science arose from poetry… when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.

The American doctor, in my opinion, possesses a combination of conservatism and that other quality which has put the United States in the forefront in almost every department of science – that is, an eagerness to know what it is really all about in order that he may not be the one left behind if there is something to it.

In the history of medicine, it is not always the great scientist or the learned doctor who goes forward to discover new fields, new avenues, new ideas.

I need physics more than friends.

Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.

There’ll always be serendipity involved in discovery.

For NASA, space is still a high priority.

Ever since Newton, we’ve done science by taking things apart to see how they work. What the computer enables us to do is to put things together to see how they work: we’re now synthesized rather than analysed. I find one of the most enthralling aspects of computers is limitless communication.

Amazon.com strives to be the e-commerce destination where consumers can find and discover anything they want to buy online.

The senses are of the earth, the reason stands apart from them in contemplation.

Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.

Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel? To my juvenile eyes, Darwin was proved true every day. It doesn’t take much to make us flip back into monkeys again.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

Heaven cannot brook two suns, nor earth two masters.

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

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country’s scared.

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

Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.

I never wanted to be a scientist per se. I wanted to be a naturalist.

There is nothing bigger or older than the universe.

Evolution can go to hell as far as I am concerned. What a mistake we are. We have mortally wounded this sweet life-supporting planet – the only one in the whole Milky Way – with a century of transportation whoopee.

The greatest progress is in the sciences that study the simplest systems. So take, say, physics – greatest progress there. But one of the reasons is that the physicists have an advantage that no other branch of sciences has. If something gets too complicated, they hand it to someone else.

Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.

Religion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge – the only one which can embrace the past and future of evolution and so contemplate, measure and fulfil them.

I think that man has a fundamental obligation to extract from himself and from the earth all that it can give; and this obligation is all the more imperative that we are absolutely ignorant of what limits – they may still be very distant – God has imposed on our natural understanding and power.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

We have lived long enough to experience the hollowness of earth and the rottenness of all carnal promises.

I have a big following among the biogeeks of this world. Nobody ever puts them in books.

Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.

I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‚Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.‘

Knowing that we are primates, I think, is a fascinating discovery, and a very interesting and rather cheering one.

There could be shadow galaxies, shadow stars, and even shadow people.

The motions which the planets now have could not spring from any natural cause alone, but were impressed by an intelligent Agent.

The motions of the comets are exceedingly regular, and they observe the same laws as the motions of the planets, but they differ from the motions of vortices in every particular and are often contrary to them.

Nature never breaks her own laws.

Science is not only a disciple of reason but, also, one of romance and passion.

The study and knowledge of the universe would somehow be lame and defective were no practical results to follow.

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

My first popular book, ‚A Brief History of Time,‘ aroused a great deal of interest, but many found it difficult to understand.

I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.

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

Science never makes things that do not have to do with what we feel, by which I mean what we want and what we fear.

God may exist, but science can explain the universe without the need for a creator.

The most obvious characteristic of science is its application: the fact that, as a consequence of science, one has a power to do things. And the effect this power has had need hardly be mentioned. The whole industrial revolution would almost have been impossible without the development of science.

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?

My desire was not to pass any island without taking possession, so that, one having been taken, the same may be said of all.

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

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

Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years.

Science is nothing but perception.

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.

Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.