The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.
No other planet in the solar system is a suitable home for human beings; it's this world or nothing. That's a very powerful perception.
We hunger to understand, so we invent myths about how we imagine the world is constructed - and they're, of course, based upon what we know, which is ourselves and other animals. So we make up stories about how the world was hatched from a cosmic egg or created after the mating of cosmic deities or by some fiat of a powerful being.
I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.
It's been said that astronomy is a humbling and, I might add, a character-building experience.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.
Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.
Even these stars, which seem so numerous, are as sand, as dust - or less than dust - in the enormity of the space in which there is nothing.
We're in very bad trouble if we don't understand the planet we're trying to save.
All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.
If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?
I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.
Today, we're still loaded down - and, to some extent, embarrassed - by ancient myths, but we respect them as part of the same impulse that has led to the modern, scientific kind of myth. But we now have the opportunity to discover, for the first time, the way the universe is in fact constructed as opposed to how we would wish it to be constructed.
We start out a million years ago in a small community on some grassy plain; we hunt animals, have children, and develop a rich social, sexual, and intellectual life, but we know almost nothing about our surroundings.
You probably don't need more weapons than what's required to destroy every city on earth. There's only 2,300 cities. So, the United States, by that criteria, only needs 2,300 nuclear weapons - well, we've got more than 25,000!
Most of the people that I deal with are human. So I've had a lot of experience with that.
The professed function of the nuclear weapons on each side is to prevent the other side from using their nuclear weapons. If that's all it is, then we've gotta as: how many nuclear weapons do you need to do that?
