For me, one of the most fertile consequences of the space program is the extent to which it stimulates people to innovate because they want to create a different tomorrow than what they're living in today. And it's that culture of innovation that spawns entirely new economies.

Dreams about the future are always filled with gadgets.

Science literacy is the artery through which the solutions of tomorrow's problems flow.

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.

I'm often asked whether I believe in Global Warming. I now just reply with the question: "Do you believe in Gravity?"

I am not the most annoying person to bring to a movie 'cause I basically hold it in and write about it later or tweet about it. The most annoying people to bring to movies, I think we all agree, are those who read the book first.

This fear factor, this war driver is a very strong one and it's been with the species ever since the beginning and it motivated the Great Wall of China. War can be aggressive or defensive, right? So it motivated the Great Wall of China. Our space program was reactive to Russia.