Dinosaurs are extinct today because they lacked opposable thumbs and the brainpower to build a space program.

Doing what has never been done before is intellectually seductive, whether or not we deem it practical.

The cosmic perspective not only embraces our genetic kinship with all life on Earth but also values our chemical kinship with any yet-to-be discovered life in the universe, as well as our atomic kinship with the universe itself.

I look up at the night sky, and I know that, yes, we are part of this Universe, we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up—many people feel small, because they’re small and the Universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars.

Uranus was almost named George.

...the matter we have come to love in the universe - the stuff of stars, planets and life - is only a light frosting on the cosmic cake, modest buoys afloat in a vast cosmic ocean of something that looks like nothing.

….. Neptune, the outermost planet.No, it’s not Pluto. Get over it.

While most branches of science have ascended in this era, the field of astrophysics persistently rises to the top. I think I know why. At one time or another every one of us has looked up at the night sky and wondered: What does it all mean? How does it all work? And, what is my place in the universe?

To govern a society shared by people of emotion, people of reason, and everybody in between—as well as people who think their actions are shaped by logic but in fact are shaped by feelings or nonempirical philosophies—you need politics.