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...

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 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.