23 Quotes by Heinz Pagels

Science cannot resolve moral conflicts, but it can help to more accurately frame the debates about those conflicts.

The world changed from having the determinism of a clock to having the contingency of a pinball machine.

Science shows us what exists but not what to do about it.

I like to browse in occult bookshops if for no other reason than to refresh my commitment to science.

Stars are like animals in the wild. We may see the young but never the actual birth, which is a veiled and secret event.

The capacity to tolerate complexity and welcome contradiction, not the need for simplicity and certainty, is the attribute of an explorer. Centuries ago, when some people suspended their search for absolute truth and began instead to ask how things worked, modern science was born. Curiously, it was by abandoning the search for absolute truth that science began to make progress, opening the material universe to human exploration.

Our capacity for fulfillment can come only through faith and feelings. But our capacity for survival must come from reason and knowledge.

As I continued to fall into the dark void, embraced by the vault of the heavens, I sang to the beauty of the stars and made my peace with the darkness.

It is unlikely that we will ever see a star being born. Stars are like animals in the wild. We may see the very young, but never their actual birth, which is a veiled and secret event. Stars are born inside thick clouds of dust and gas in the spiral arms of the galaxy, so thick that visible light cannot penetrate them.