The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses.

I'd like the [Cosmos] series to be so visually stimulating that somebody who isn't even interested in the concepts will just watch for the effects. And I'd like people who are prepared to do some thinking to be really stimulated.

While our behavior is still significantly controlled by our genetic inheritance, we have, through our brains, a much richer opportunity to blaze new behavioral and cultural pathways on short timescales.

Centuries hence, when current social and political problems may seem as remote as the problems of the Thirty Years' War are to us, our age may be remembered chiefly for one fact: It was the time when the inhabitants of the earth first made contact with the vast cosmos in which their small planet is embedded.

After the earth dies, some 5 billion years from now, after it's burned to a crisp, or even swallowed by the Sun, there will be other worlds and stars and galaxies coming into being - and they will know nothing of a place once called Earth.

A proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us, in all times, places, and cultures. It has been the means for our survival. It is our birthright. When, through indifference, inattention, incompetence, or fear of skepticism, we discourage children from science, we are disenfranchisin g them, taking from them the tools needed to manage their future.

I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this cosmos in which we float, like a mote of dust in the morning sky.