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" For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. "

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" If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. "

" We're in very bad trouble if we don't understand the planet we're trying to save. "

" We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal's 'Pensees' and read, 'I am the great silent spaces between worlds.' "

" Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. "

" Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. "

" 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. "

" We are the representatives of the cosmos; we are an example of what hydrogen atoms can do, given 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. "

" 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. "

" The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous. "

" Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works. "

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

" 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 they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. "

" I've written a number of books that have to do with the evolution of humans, human intelligence, human emotions. "

" 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 exists almost nowhere, and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce. "

" Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. "

" 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. "

" 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? "

Nuclear Weapons

" I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students. "

" 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! "

" The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent. "

" It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. "

" The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition. "

" The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It's not that there's something new in our way of thinking - it's that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before. "

" 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. "

" We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces. "

" A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism. "

" When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you'll never forget it. "

" 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've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. "

" In our obscurity - in all this vastness - there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. "