The universe is unfolding as it should.

We do not know why we are born into the world, but we can try to find out what sort of a world it is - at least in its physical aspects.

All nature is a vast symbolism: Every material fact has sheathed within it a spiritual truth.

Past time is finite, future time is infinite.

The history of astronomy is a history of receding horizons.

I knew that even if I were second or third rate, it was astronomy that mattered.

Science is the one human activity that is truly progressive. The body of positive knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.

Not until the empirical resources are exhausted, need we pass on to the dreamy realms of speculation.

Wisdom cannot be directly transmitted, and does not readily accumulate through the ages.

The great spirals, with their enormous radial velocities and insensible proper motions, apparently lie outside our Solar system.

There we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial.

A thousand pounds for clothes--when on thinks how long poor people could live on it! When one thinks how long we could live on it, for that matter!

...it always felt good to have that moment of resolve, like saying, "I'm gonna learn French!" It doesn't matter if you do it or not, deciding is the high, right?

how much does a thought weigh?

I would happily, sometimes more than happily, have vacated my role as an animal theologian, if there were others prepared to take my place.

Freedom is the crux of self-respect. It is difficult to feel good about ourselves when we are unnaturally dependent on someone or something.

I've never done anything half-heartedly. It's the reason my comics did well. It's the reason my comics were drawn well. I can't do anything bad.

We're always in that head space about the audience and less about us at that moment.

On one occasion I went to Afghanistan to look at the borders and learn something about the situation there to see if my book was there?and it wasnt.

Pope John Paul would be more popular if he called himself Pope John Paul George and Ringo.

I'll grant the random access to my heart, Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love; And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove And in our bound partition never part.