If you want to have a program for moving out into the universe, you have to think in centuries not in decades.

Of course, long-distance running has to do with the fact that we're hunters.

If the tools are bad, nature's voice is muffled. If the tools are good, nature will give us a clear answer to a clear question.

The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. ... It was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York.

Climate change is part of the normal order of things, and we know it was happening before humans came.

For me too, the periodic table was a passion. ... As a boy, I stood in front of the display for hours, thinking how wonderful it was that each of those metal foils and jars of gas had its own distinct personality.

Science and religion are, of course, two different ways of looking at the universe; and it's the same universe with two different windows.