All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.

We are rare and precious because we are alive, because we can think as well as we can. We are privileged to influence and perhaps control our future. I believe we have an obligation to fight for life on Earth - not just for ourselves, but for all those, humans and others, who came before us, and to whom we are beholden, and for all those who, if we are wise enough, will come after.

Goddard represented a unique combination of visionary dedication and technological brilliance. He studied physics because he needed physics to get to Mars. In reading the notebooks of Robert Goddard, I am struck by how powerful his exploratory and scientific motivations were - and how influental speculative ideas, even erroneous ones, can be on the shaping of the future.

The cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff

In the deepest sense the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a search for ourselves.

Much of human history can, I think, be described as a gradual and sometimes painful liberation from provincialism, the emerging awareness that there is more to the world than was generally believed by our ancestors.

If you want to make a [rhubarb] pie from scratch, first you have to create the universe.