We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.

The Universe forces those who live in it to understand it. Those creatures who find everyday experience a muddled jumble of events with no predictability, no regularity, are in grave peril. The Universe belongs to those who, at least to some degree, have figured it out.

Observation: I can't see a thing. Conclusion: Dinosaurs.

First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?

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

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

There is no other species on Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything.