Every one of us is precious in the cosmic perspective. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.

We have heard the rationales offered by the nuclear superpowers. We know who speaks for the nations. But who speaks for the human species? Who speaks for Earth?

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

We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands.

The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.

We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.

History is full of people who out of fear, or ignorance, or lust for power have destroyed knowledge of immeasurable value which truly belongs to us all. We must not let it happen again.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insights and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species.

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