In the animal kingdom, one of the keys to survival is to outwit your enemies. And when you're surrounded by carnivores, one of the best strategies is to fade into the background and disappear.

Any astrophysicist does not feel small looking up at the universe; we feel large.

I knew my interest in the universe and I owned a telescope that I bought with money I earned by walking dogs. 50 cents per walk, per dog, and that accumulated quickly. I bought a camera, a telescope. I taught myself astrophotography. I did all this.

Imagine a world in which we are all enlightened by objective truths rather than offended by them.

You can deceive yourself into thinking that America is a technological leader, but if you don't see what anyone else is doing you have no accurate assessment - you can't make an accurate assessment of where you fit and why. I consider our moving frontier in space as the anecdote to that downward trend.

Space only becomes ordinary when the frontier is no longer being breached.

You can get an Egg McMuffin all day; you just can't get the hamburger all day.