Once confined to fantasy and science fiction, time travel is now simply an engineering problem.

"Did God have a mother?" Children, when told that God made the heavens and the earth, innocently ask whether God had a mother. This deceptively simple question has stumped the elders of the church and embarrassed the finest theologians, precipitating some of the thorniest theological debates over the centuries. All the great religions have elaborate mythologies surrounding the divine act of Creation, but none of them adequately confronts the logical paradoxes inherent in the question that even children ask.

After that cancellation [of the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas, after $2 billion had been spent on it], we physicists learned that we have to sing for our supper. ... The Cold War is over. You can't simply say "Russia!" to Congress, and they whip out their checkbook and say, "How much?" We have to tell the people why this atom-smasher is going to benefit their lives.

Science is the engine of prosperity. But you'd never know it, listening to some of the politicians. They're lawyers and businessmen, not scientists. Lawyers and businessmen massage wealth; they don't create it.

If you could meet your grandkids as elderly citizens in the year 2100 … you would view them as being, basically, Greek gods… that's where we're headed.

I think Newton would be the greatest scientist who ever lived.

We're headed for what is called Type 1 Civilization, planetary civilization. Type 2 would be stellar civilization, like Star Trek. Type 3 Civilization would be galactic, like Star Wars. We are Type 0. We get our energy from dead plants, oil and coal. But the question is: Will we make it? Will we make the transition from Type 0 to Type 1? It's not clear.