We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

On the day that we do discover that we are not alone, our society may begin to evolve and transform in some incredible and wondrous new ways.

Virtually every major technological advance in the history of the human species - back to the invention of stone tools and the domestication of fire - has been ethically ambiguous.

At a few hundred kilometers altitude, the Earth fills half your sky, and the band of blue that stretches from Mindanao to Bombay, which your eye encompasses in a single glance, can break your heart with its beauty. Home you think. Home. This is my world. This is where I come from. Everyone I know, everyone I ever heard of, grew up down there, under that relentless and exquisite blue.

Human beings grew up in forests; we have a natural affinity for them. How lovely a tree is, straining toward the sky.

Otherwise we don't run the government the government runs us

Science is a way to not fool ourselves.