For all we know, the aliens have already done this and unwittingly concluded that there was no intelligent life on Earth. They would now be looking elsewhere. A more humbling possibility would be if aliens had become aware of the technologically proficient species that now inhabits Earth, yet they had drawn the same conclusion.

People like death and mayhem.

When you advance a frontier and you do tomorrow what's never been done today, you have to innovate to make that happen. You become an innovation culture. When I grew up, every time I turned around it was, "Oh, here's the longest bridge or the deepest tunnel or the fastest airplane." And I originally thought that was just kind of like a pissing contest with men with too much testosterone. And then I realized that to make the tallest building you have to innovate. To make the fastest train you have to design the train in a way that it's never been designed before.

Next time you're stunned by a large moon on the horizon, bend over and view it between your legs. The effect goes away entirely.

I know that the molecules in my body are traceable to phenomena in the cosmos. That makes me want to grab people on the street and say: ‘Have you HEARD THIS?

Kids should be allowed to break stuff more often. That's a consequence of exploration. Exploration is what you do when you don't know what you're doing.

I'd rather enjoy the money, and then be buried, offering my body back to the flora and fauna of which I have dined my whole life.