Exploration is what you do when you don't know what you're doing. That's what scientists do every day. If a scientist already knew what they were doing, they wouldn't be discovering anything, because they already knew what they were doing.

Whether or not you can become great at something, you can always become better.

We are not simply in the universe, we are part of it. We are born from it. One might even say we have been empowered by the universe to figure itself out - and we have only just begun.

I always wanted to be respected for my mind.

While I'm a big fan of science fiction, especially as rendered in expensive Hollywood blockbusters, it's the real universe that calls to me. To fall into a black hole, that is more amazing than anything I've ever read in a science-fiction story.

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

Without new economies, our old economies get our jobs taken from them because everyone else has figured out how to do it.