You get to say that the Earth is flat because we live in a country that guarantees your free speech. But it's not a country that guarantees that anything you say is correct.

Who knows how dead Lazarus was? Was Lazarus decomposing in a six-foot grave when Jesus resurrected him? No, he wasn't.

God displayed a sense of humor when he configured the region between our legs an entertainment complex built around a sewage system.

With ticket prices, do you ask yourself, why I'm paying $70 to see the arts? You say, "No, that's what the symphony is costing me."

You have the illusion of free will, but, in fact, that illusion comes about because you don't know the future. Because you are a prisoner of the present, forever locked in transition, between the past and the future.

It'd be a shame to talk about the universe and not show some images of it, because we have some of the more stunning representations of our field relative to any of the sciences. But I don't use the imagery as a substitute for the insights and wisdom I can convey so that when you leave you say to yourself, "Wow, I'm a little more deeply connected to the universe, and I want to learn more."

People like it when they understand something that they previously thought they couldn't understand. It's a sense of empowerment.