Perhaps we’ve never been visited by aliens because they have looked upon earth and decided there’s no sign of intelligent life.

Just before I said I wanted to be an astronomer I said I wanted to be a baseball player. I was quite athletic at the time, probably because I was bigger than other kids, and if you're bigger than other kids and you're 11 you win everything.

Science is not just a topic we can step around or ignore.

I've known from long ago that the universe was calling me. If you were one of those annoying adults that said, 'Oh, what are you gonna be when you grow up?' I would say, 'Astrophysicist .' And then they'd walk away real quickly.

When NASA dreams big America dreams big. People...kids say, 'I want to do that when I grow up'. Because you want to do what's visible to you.

If Pizza sizes were given in area not diameter, you'd see instantly that a 7 inch is less than half the size of a 10 inch pie

I'm not a scientist, I was not a good science student, I felt effectively alienated from science throughout my young life, and it was only when I became an adult that I began to really appreciate from a completely different angle the power of science.