We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Understanding is a kind of ecstasy

For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations, as in ancient Greece in the time of Homer, where there were gods of the sky and the Earth, the thunderstorm, the oceans and the underworld, fire and time and love and war; where every tree and meadow had its dryad and maenad.

Science gropes and staggers toward improved understanding.

The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos.