I want to create the airplane that flies in the rarified atmosphere of Mars. This is what galvanizes a generation to want to become scientists and engineers in the first place, not we need a scientist to develop a plane that's 20 percent more fuel-efficient than the one your parents flew.

The greatest teachers are the ones that turn a B student into an A student, or a failing student into a B student.

The first colony on Mars is not going to be built by a private company. How are you going to make money? You're not.

All the great advances in cinema came about from technology. The 3-D camera was not invented by a movie director. The new industries are driven by the innovations in science and technology.

People like it when they understand something that they previously thought they couldn't understand. It's a sense of empowerment.

When I was a kid, I thought that if everyone looked up the way I did then everyone would want to study the universe just like me - how could they not? This naiveté is what tells me that my interest was more a calling than a rational comparative assessment about what to be when I grew up.

... there is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance.