We are all star stuff.

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.

Our children long for realistic maps of the future that they can be proud of. Where are the cartographers of human purpose?

Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.

Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there's no turning back from science.

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.

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 has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood.

On the day that we do discover that we are not alone, our society may begin to evolve and transform in some incredible and wondrous new ways.

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.

The near side of a galaxy is tens of thousands of light-years closer to us than the far side; thus we see the front as it was tens of thousands of years before the back. But typical events in galactic dynamics occupy tens of millions of years, so the error in thinking of an image of a galaxy as frozen in one moment of time is small.

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.

I would be very ashamed of my civilization if we did not try to find out if there is life in outer space.

Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgement, the manner in which information is coordinated and used.

This zest to explore and exploit, however thoughtless its agents may have been, has clear survival value. It is not restricted to any one nation or ethnic group. It is an endowment that all members of the human species hold in common.

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 the library.

It is very difficult to evolve by altering the deep fabric of life; any change there is likely to be lethal. But fundamental change can be accomplished by the addition of new systems on top of old ones.

It is interesting that it is not the getting of any sort of knowledge that God has forbidden, but, specifically, the knowledge of the difference between good and evil-that is, abstract and moral judgments, which, if they reside anywhere, reside in the neocortex.

I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture, and our concern for the future, can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.

Preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.