"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?"
"You squeeze the eyedropper, and a drop of pond water drips out onto the microscope stage. You look at the projected image. The drop is full of life - strange beings swimming, crawling, tumbling; high dramas of pursuit and escape, triumph and tragedy. This is a world populated by beings far more exotic than in any science fiction movie..."
"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."
"There is much that science doesn't understand, many mysteries still to be resolved. In a Universe tens of billions of light-years across and some ten or fifteen billion years old, this may be the case forever. We are constantly stumbling on new surprises"
"Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves."