In just one year, the expenditure of of the U.S.'s military budget is equivalent to the entire 50-year running budget of NASA combined.

The solar system should be viewed as our backyard, not as some sequence of destinations that we do one at a time.

I have a multivolume history of the world from the 19th century that begins with Noah's flood as though it's as historical a fact as the rise and fall of Rome.

Don't get in the way of children who find it natural and obvious to explore the world around them - even if it means they make a mess of your kitchen or living room. It's all about your perspective on these things. Let them play. When you do, the kids do not have to be reintroduced to ways of questioning nature, and the task of promoting science would be a trivial exercise.

God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.

If you find life on Europa [Jupiter's moon], like, what would you call it? Would it be, like, Europeans?

In the first year of a child's life we teach them to walk and talk. And then for the rest of their lives we want them to sit down and be quiet.