Our planet has been around only for four and a half billion years. Let's imagine a planet that has life on it such as life is on Earth and it's seven billion years old. Let's say that planet evolved intelligence. Well, that intelligence would be way more advanced than what we call intelligence here on Earth. How long has intelligence been around on Earth as we've come to define it?

When NASA dreams big America dreams big. People...kids say, 'I want to do that when I grow up'. Because you want to do what's visible to you.

I try to educate the public and let them make the decisions for themselves.

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.

Your center of mass is a place you cannot visit but you always carry with you. Like memories, it is part of life's baggage.

In just one year, the expenditure of of the U.S.'s military budget is equivalent to the entire 50-year running budget of NASA combined.

I think we are all the sum of that which has happened in our lives. And if you're successful, it would be wrong to think that you'd be more successful had something been easier. That's not a given.