They [scientists of centuries past] call on God only from the lonely and precarious edge of incomprehension. Where they feel certain about their explanations, however, God gets hardly a mention.

If the Sun exploded, we wouldn't know about it for 8 minutes and 20 seconds. Light and gravity take that long to reach us. Then we would vaporize.

It's my duty to enlighten people.

What scientists want next is a thorough comparison of what we and exosolar planets and vagabonds look like. Only in this way will we know whether our home life is normal or whether we live in a dysfunctional solar family.

There are two kinds of comments that I get. One is, oh, you're such a natural up there, and the other one is, you're working hard up there. And the ones who say I'm working hard are teachers, they're the educators; they're the people who are the performers. It's a huge investment of my psycho-emotional energy to pull that off and to make it look smooth.

We hunger for significance, for signs that our personal existence is of special meaning to the universe. To that end, we’re all too eager to deceive ourselves and others, to discern a sacred image in a grilled cheese sandwich or find a divine warning in a comet

The most successful scientists in the history of the world are those who posed the right questions