The fact is that people would rather cling when they're afraid of something to a priori beliefs than rather open their minds about it.

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: you are all stardust.

There are a lot of legislators who are afraid that kids will learn science and lose their faith.

Of course, supernatural acts are what miracles are all about. They are, after all, precisely those things that circumvent the laws of nature. A god who can create the laws of nature can presumably also circumvent them at will. Although why they would have been circumvented so liberally thousands of years ago, before the invention of modern communication instruments that could have recorded them, and not today, is still something to wonder about.

The ultimate goal of physicists is to arrive at an equation that explains everything and could fit on a t-shirt. That may happen but the t-shirt would have to be 10-dimensional.

If our species is to survive, our future will probably require outposts beyond our own planet.

There is a maxim about the universe which I always tell my students: That which is not explicitly forbidden is guaranteed to occur.