I always say when you see that old black-and-white footage of the rocket on the launch pad and it falls over and explodes, that's because people had slide rules. Not having the decimal point is a real drawback. You want the decimal point, take it from me.

But as the cerebellum degrades with age, so does the quality of memories. The memories are there, but they're not as good.

Religion is a completely different thing from the claim that the Earth is six thousand years old. That's just crazy.

The US Navy has several people on every ship that can navigate by the stars. They don't fool with that.

There really is no such thing as race. We all came from Africa. We are all of the same stardust. We are all going to live and die on the same planet, a Pale Blue Dot in the vastness of space. We have to work together.

I tell personal stories associated with aspects of the theory, and I hope they are interesting and compelling. I don't feel you're going to change a grownup's mind in one reading. People have to be exposed to scientific ideas over and over again for years. It's also not a textbook.

If we raise a generation of students who dont believe in the process of science, who think everything that weve come to know about nature and the universe can be dismissed by a few sentences translated into English from some ancient text, youre not going to continue to innovate.