When you innovate, the jobs can't go overseas because other countries haven't figured out how to do it yet.

There are photons that have been traveling for 30,000 years, and I'm... snatching them from this journey and planting them into my digital detector. And then I started feeling bad for the photon, and I said maybe it wanted to continue but I got in its way. But then I said, no, those are probably happier photons than the one that slammed into the mountainside that will go unanalyzed and will not contribute to the depth of our understanding of the universe.

Too many people view on [space exploration] as a luxury rather than as a fundamental driver to stimulate interest in science to everyone in the educational pipeline. It's vital to our prosperity and security.

Any time we are answer-driven rather than idea driven, we have lost the true meaning of education.

What are the lessons to be learned from this journey of the mind through the universe? That humans are emotionally fragile, perennially gullible, hopelessly ignorant masters of an insignificantly small speck in the cosmos. Have a nice day.

I don't have an issue with what you do in the church, but I'm going to be up in your face if you're going to knock on my science classroom and tell me they've got to teach what you're teaching in your Sunday school. Because that's when we're going to fight.

In the end, it's the people who are curious who change the world.