The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.

The universe is not a machine, however, but a living process. Time is real, and the future is genuinely open. To suppose otherwise is to mistake the map for the territory, and the clock for the heartbeat it was built to measure.

The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.

The world is not to be put in order; the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.

The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent. To that indifference we owe both our freedom and our terror.

The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.

The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent.

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls.

The universe is not a machine after all but something more like a mind. It is more like a thought made flesh than like a machine made of matter.

The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent. To the large mind of the astronomer it is neither cruel nor kind, but only stupendous — and that is almost worse than cruelty.

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

We live on the surface of a star, and we are made of the dust of stars. The atoms in our bodies were forged in the hearts of dying stars billions of years ago.

We are made of starstuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself. We have come from the interstellar medium and into the form of conscious beings able to ask the supreme questions.

The atoms of our bodies are traceable to origins in the distant past; they are made of stardust literally.

The atoms of our bodies are traceable to origins in the distant past; they are made of starstuff which was assembled here, billions of years ago, in the course of the formation of the Earth as a planet. For this reason the constituents of our bodies are literally and intimately connected with the rest of the Universe.

The atoms of our bodies are traceable to origins in the distant past; they have formed in stars and at the centers of galaxies, and have passed through uncounted transformations. The yesterday of the atom is the history of the universe.

The atoms of our bodies are traceable to origins in the distant past; we are made of stellar material, and the iron in our blood was forged in dying stars.

The atoms of our bodies are traceable to origins in the distant past; they have formed the cores of stars—gone through many transformations of the universe and of all the transformations of matter in space and time we are their inheritors.