The reason why new concepts in any branch of science are hard to grasp is always the same; contemporary scientists try to picture the new concept in terms of ideas which existed before.

You ask: what is the meaning or purpose of life? I can only answer with another question: do you think we are wise enough to read God's mind?

The greatest unsolved mysteries are the mysteries of our existence as conscious beings in a small corner of a vast universe.

If you want to have a program for moving out into the universe, you have to think in centuries not in decades.

A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.

Technology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich.

The idea that global warming is the most important problem facing the world is total nonsense and is doing a lot of harm.

Unfortunately the global warming hysteria, as I see it, is driven by politics more than by science.

In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad.

So long as you have courage and a sense of humor, it is never too late to start life afresh.

Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences.

So much in a revolution is nothing but waiting.

My sister and I, you will recollect, were twins, and you know how subtle are the links which bind two souls which are so closely allied.

As much as I would miss my wife if she were to die, I would miss what we are together even more. Our "we-ness," our "us-ness."

I'm very close with my higher power. I have a very strong connection with it.

What our enemies have begun, we will finish.

Nobody loves you better because you have used yourself up for them.

When I started at the Guardian, though, I couldnt think of anything we saw eye to eye on, except feminism, and even this would soon be arguable as Guardian writers queued up to drool over Eminem.

A hole in one is amazing when you think of the different universes this white mass of molecules has to pass through on its way to the hole.

You can go to Spain, and Cubans are looked down upon. It's strange how people chop up where you're from.

All that is good and commendable now existing would continue to exist if all marriage laws were repealed tomorrow . . .