Somehow it's O.K. for people to chuckle about not being good at math. Yet if I said, 'I never learned to read,' they'd say I was an illiterate dolt.

For centuries, epilepsy was the exact expectation of someone being possessed by the Devil. There was no better explanation, and it allows you to admit the existence of the Devil. If there's a Devil, that mean's there's a God.

As important as the civil rights movement was, I think what will rise to the top is that we left Earth in that time.

Not only do we live among the stars, the stars live within us.

The iron from that meteorite and the iron from your blood have common origin in the core of a star.

It'd be a shame to talk about the universe and not show some images of it, because we have some of the more stunning representations of our field relative to any of the sciences. But I don't use the imagery as a substitute for the insights and wisdom I can convey so that when you leave you say to yourself, "Wow, I'm a little more deeply connected to the universe, and I want to learn more."

The educated elite is not without their own actual snobbery. And I kind of an anti-elitist in that regard.