Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

It is certainly true that all beliefs and all myths are worthy of a respectful hearing. It is not true that all folk beliefs are equally valid – if we’re talking not about an internal...

By looking far out into space we are also looking far back into time, back toward the horizon of the universe, back toward the epoch of the Big Bang.

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be...

I would suggest that science is, at least in my part, informed worship.

We have held the peculiar notion that a person or society that is a little different from us, whoever we are, is somehow strange or bizarre, to be distrusted or loathed. Think of the negative...

Something very strange is going on in the depths of space.

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

The secrets of evolution, are time and death. There’s an unbroken thread that stretches from those first cells to us.

The same few dozen organic molecules are used over and over again in biology for the widest variety of functions.

The fossil record implies trial and error, the inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with a Great Designer (though not a Designer of a more remote and indirect temperament.)

The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me,...

[an encounter in space] “Some celestial event. No–no words–no words to describe it. Poetry! They should have sent a poet. So beautiful. So beautiful…I had no idea. I had no idea.

We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be.

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

Whatever the reason we first mustered the _Apollo_ program, however mired it was in Cold War nationalism and the instruments of death, the inescapable recognition of the unity and fragility of the Earth is its...

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But...

Our God Is Alive and Well. Sorry About Yours.

In its encounter with Nature, science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe. The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence...

I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever...

I don’t think science is hard to teach because humans aren’t ready for it, or because it arose only through a fluke, or because, by and large, we don’t have the brainpower to grapple with...

Should we be good?” I almost always get an answer.

We tend to hear much more about the splendors returned than the ships that brought them or the shipwrights. It has always been that way. Even those history books enamored of the voyages of Christopher...

The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us,...

In that case, on behalf of Earthlife, I urge that, with full knowledge of our limitations, we vastly increase our knowledge of the Solar System and then begin to settle other worlds.

I find these comparisons particularly poignant: life versus death, hope versus fear. Space exploration and the highly mechanized destruction of people use similar technology and manufacturers, and similar human qualities of organization and daring. Can...

Civilization is a product of the cerebral cortex.

The reappearance of the crescent moon after the new moon; the return of the Sun after a total eclipse, the rising of the Sun in the morning after its troublesome absence at night were noted...

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.

You see, the religious people — most of them — really think this planet is an experiment. That’s what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around...

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of...

But I try not to think with my gut. If I’m serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble....

Advertising teaches people not to trust their judgment. Advertising teaches people to be stupid.

The Apollo pictures of the whole Earth conveyed to multitudes something well known to astronomers: On the scale of the worlds – to say nothing of stars or galaxies – humans are inconsequential, a thin...

The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.

something not very different from the sum total of the physical laws of the universe; that is, gravitation plus quantum mechanics plus grand unified field theories plus a few other things equaled god. And by...

The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars.

When I wake up I go through an abbreviated process of mourning all over again. Plainly, there’s something within me that’s ready to believe in life after death. And it’s not the least bit interested...

For me, the most ironic token of [the first human moon landing] is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the moon. It reads, ‘We came in peace for...

The theologian Meric Casaubon argued—in his 1668 book, Of Credulity and Incredulity—that witches must exist because, after all, everyone believes in them. Anything that a large number of people believe must be true.

Once upon a time, we soared into the Solar System. For a few years. Then we hurried back. Why? What happened? What was ‘Apollo’ really about?

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle...

I don’t want to believe. I want to know.

There is a wide yawning black infinity. In every direction the extension is endless, the sensation of depth is overwhelming. And the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, fierce; but light...

When you look more generally at life on Earth, you find that it is all the same kind of life. There are not many different kinds; there’s only one kind. It uses about fifty fundamental...

One of the great commandments of science is, ‘Mistrust arguments from authority’. (Scientists, being primates, and thus given to dominance hierarchies, of course do not always follow this commandment.)

Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is to make us feel small. But if that’s their purpose, they can keep their paltry icons. We...

If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there’s nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?

Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and awe. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos...

We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of this memory is called...