Only when creative people take ownership of cosmic discovery will society accept science as the cultural activity that it is.

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

Everyone has all different experiences in school. I just know that throughout my life, at no time did any teacher ever point to me and say, hey. He'll go far.

We're quite happy with our Big Bang description of cosmic origins. But actually, the Big Bang accounts for what happened only after the beginning. The beginning itself, and especially what happened before, remains the biggest mystery of all.

Nothing is a thing: it's nothing. So I can imagine a place where there's not even nothing.

By the way, were we to find life-forms on Venus, we would probably call them Venutians, just as people from Mars would be Martians. But according to rules of Latin genitives, to be “of Venus” ought to make you a Venereal. Unfortunately, medical doctors reached that word before astronomers did. Can’t blame them, I suppose. Venereal disease long predates astronomy, which itself stands as only the second oldest profession.

Science is like an inoculation against charlatans who would have you believe whatever it is they tell you.