'We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.'

Read the writing advice of science-fiction legend Ray Bradbury.

'The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.'

- Marine biologist and environmentalist Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

A quote by Howard Hughes

"Do the impossible, because almost everyone has told me my ideas are merely fantasies."

'Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.'

- Maya Angelou

'The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.'

- Poet Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

'The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity. It's our attempt to influence things, the universe internal to ourselves and external to us.'

- Mae Jemison (1956-present), the first Black woman in space

'Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world.'

- Albert Einstein

'It's those who lie outside ordinary experience who have the most to teach us.'

- Author Malcolm Gladwell (1963 - present)

'Everybody has talent and it's just a matter of moving around until you've discovered what it is. A talent is a combination of something you love a great deal and something you can lose yourself in.'

- George Lucas (1944-present)

A quote by Lauren Bacall

"Imagination is the highest kite one can fly."

Science-fiction legend Ray Bradbury couldn't afford college, but he spent several days a week in his local library, teaching himself how to become a writer.

'Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.'

- Pablo Picasso

'The urge to explore has propelled evolution since the first water creatures reconnoitered the land. Like all living systems, cultures cannot remain static; they evolve or decline. They explore or expire.'

- Astronaut Buzz Aldrin (1930-present)

'Every day sees humanity more victorious in the struggle with space and time.'

- Radio inventor Guglielmo Marconi

A quote by Florence Nightingale

"Poetry and imagination begin life."

'When you're climbing Mount Everest, nothing is easy. You just take one step at a time, never look back and always keep your eyes glued to the top.'

- Author Jacqueline Susann (1918-1974)

'In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.'

- Isaac Asimov

'An idea is salvation by imagination.'

- US architect Frank Lloyd Wright

'There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.'

- Philosopher Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980)

'The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first, Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd.'

- Poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

'Because of phones, we always have the ability to jump out of ourselves. But unless you learn how to be in your head, you’ll never learn how to create.'

- Songwriter and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda (1980-present)

A quote by scientist Nikola Tesla

"The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result ... His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way."

'We are more fulfilled when we are involved in something bigger than ourselves.'

- Astronaut John Glenn (1921–2016)

'We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.'

- Playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

'In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.'

-Poet Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Even in a perfect vacuum, empty space is full of quantum activity

Scientists have tried to create “nothing” by removing all matter, energy, and heat from a container, but the uncertainty principle and relativity prevent such conditions within any period of time. This means the universe is full of quantum foam, which can produce forces from nothingness.

'On the return trip home, gazing through 240,000 miles of space toward the stars and the planet from which I had come, I suddenly experienced the universe as intelligent, loving, harmonious..'

-Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, in "The Way of the Explorer"

'Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul—and sings the tunes without the words—and never stops at all.'

- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

An early short story by Ray Bradbury was plucked from an open submission call by 'In Cold Blood' author Truman Capote, who believed he'd found a significant voice.

'Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.'

- Author James Joyce (1882 -1941)

'At every moment, we always have a choice, even if it feels as if we don’t. Sometimes that choice may simply be to think a more positive thought.'

- Singer Tina Turner (1993–2023)

Hear Carl Sagan reflect on the smallness of humanity

'Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.'

- "Peanuts" cartoonist Charles M. Schulz (1922-2000)

Stephen Hawking on the need to explore space

Should we be content with being cosmic couch potatoes? In this interview, the late Professor Stephen Hawking lays out the case for continued and increased human space exploration, despite its cost and challenges.

'Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.'

- Author Philip Roth (1933-2018)

'A word after a word after a word is power.'

- Author Margaret Atwood (1939-present)

'Everything you look at can become a fairy tale and you can get a story from everything you touch.'

- Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)

Sci-fi author Ray Bradbury offered to help aid the Kennedy Administration during the 1960s Space Race.

'I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot ... The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.'

- Author Jack London (1876 - 1916)

Ten writers and thinkers on what growing older actually requires of us

The Marginalian's Maria Popova curates a collection arguing our culture has learned to dread aging while forgetting it is a privilege, and that the antidote is sustaining passions strong enough to keep us from turning inward. Voices include Simone de Beauvoir, Joan Didion, Pablo Casals, and Kahlil Gibran.

'I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.'

- Author Douglas Adams (1952-2001)

Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451' was originally called 'The Fireman,' but he changed the title after learning the temperature at which paper burns.

'The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.'

-Writer J.D. Salinger (1919-2010)

'Mediocrity is always invisible until passion shows up and exposes it'

- Graham Cooke

'For it would seem—her case proved it—that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.'

- Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) in "Orlando: A Biography"

'I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning ... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.'

- Miles Davis (1926-1991)

The case for optimism

Author, editor, and thinker Kevin Kelly makes an argument for optimism. Not only as a personal philosophy, but as a moral obligation, focusing on the need for optimism in overcoming challenges. Drawing examples ranging back to the Wright brothers,...

'If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.'

- Marine biologist and author Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

Ray Bradbury used the structure of John Steinbeck's 'Grapes of Wrath' to structure his influential science fiction masterpiece, 'The Martian Chronicles.'

'Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them.'

- Artist Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)