Too many people view on [space exploration] as a luxury rather than as a fundamental driver to stimulate interest in science to everyone in the educational pipeline. It's vital to our prosperity and security.

In the New Testament, Thomas Jefferson cut out everything that was mystical, magical, miracle - physically with scissors - and then pasted in all that remained, such as Jesus's Sermon on the Mount.

Once you have an innovation culture, even those who are not scientists or engineers - poets, actors, journalists - they, as communities, embrace the meaning of what it is to be scientifically literate. They embrace the concept of an innovation culture. They vote in ways that promote it. They don't fight science and they don't fight technology.

Odd how often blood is shed to obtain freedom from those in power. Oppressors must be the most insecure people in the world.

I believe that the manned space program can engage the public by advancing the space frontier. Every next mission takes you farther out in space than you were before, either technologically or in terms of distance.

In life and in the universe it's always best to keep looking up.

To believe in a universe as young as 6 or 7,000 years old is to extinguish the light from most of the galaxy.