If all that you see, do, measure and discover is the will of a deity, then ideas can never be proven wrong, you have no predictive power, and you are at a loss to understand the principles behind most of the fundamental interconnections of nature.

As a citizen, as a public scientist, I can tell you that Einstein essentially overturned a so strongly established paradigm of science, whereas Darwin didn't really overturn a science paradigm.

Society needs to see science not as a luxury of funding but as a fundamental activity that drives enlightenment, economics, and security.

I don't even think much about politicians. I think about the people in the audience who applaud the politicians. They are your fellow countrymen and they're the ones you live with - that should be who we target for education and enlightenment.

Imagine a world in which we are all enlightened by objective truths rather than offended by them.

In America, there are people who don't read science fiction but still think about tomorrow, so it's not only the force of science-fiction that makes you a tomorrow thinker.

As a scientist, I want to go to Mars and back to asteroids and the Moon because I'm a scientist. But I can tell you, I'm not so naive a scientist to think that the nation might not have geopolitical reasons for going into space.