There was a transition going on - Baghdad being the intellectual capital of the world where major advances were made in agriculture and mathematics and engineering and medicine and astronomy, and then that all sort of collapsed. And I was trying to understand how such a intellectually fertile environment can lose its compass bearing. Because I think about the creative centers today - countries, or even regions. Will Silicon Valley always be as innovative? Will the United States be innovative, or will we become complacent?

You can't have people making decisions about the future of the world who are scientifically illiterate. That's a recipe for disaster. And I don't mean just whether a politician is scientifically literate, but people who vote politicians into office.

God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.

If we're going to affect policy, or affect attitudes, for me, the adults have always been the target population.

When everyone agrees to a single solution and a single plan, there's nothing more efficient in the world than an efficient democracy.

I think on some level, role models are overrated If you require a role model who looks just like you to be something you wanna be and you can't find one, is that a reason to not be what you wanna be? No!

So not enough people in this world, I think, carry a cosmic perspective with them. It could be life-changing.