Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense...

Quantum computation is a distinctively new way of harnessing nature. It will be the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes.

Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow.

It is possible to build a virtual-reality generator whose repertoire includes every possible environment.

Every problem that is interesting is also soluble.

Base metals can be transmuted into gold by stars, and by intelligent beings who understand the processes that power stars, but by nothing else in the universe.

The whole [scientific] process resembles biological evolution. A problem is like an ecological niche, and a theory is like a gene or a species which is being tested for viability in that niche.

No precautions, and no precautionary principle, can avoid problems that we do not yet foresee. We need a stance of problem-fixing, not just problem-avoidance.

The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.

Humans may or may not have cosmic significance, and if they do, it will be by hitching a ride on the objective centrality of knowledge in the cosmic scheme of things.

If we can't program it, we can't understand it.

Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy.

there is more strengthin admitting vulnerability than in faking invincibility

War does have a way of interfering with one's most closely held desires.

You cannot sell a Christendom approach to a post-Christian world. They are anti-Christian.

World-view is a product of life-view, not vice versa.

The quiet conscience is an invention of the devil.

I'm a nut, but not just a nut.

The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of The New York Times or the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C.

Has anyone ever told you," I said, "that you coalesce reality?" "No. They only say that I'm good in the sack." "They are accurate but limited," I said. "And if you give me their names I'll kill them.

O sleep! O gentle sleep! Nature's soft nurse.