I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.

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.

We are not the measure of all things. There is much in the world that is indifferent to human purposes, and this indifference is a kind of freedom—for us and for reality itself.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. The fact that some of us look at the stars does not make us better than those who do not.