We should not measure our space-faring era by where footprints have been laid.... We should measure our era by how many people take no notice at all. A legacy rises to become culture only when its elements are so common that they no longer attract comment.

The world, I think, has too many late-night talk shows.

If the people of Comic-Con ruled the world...then tomorrow would be invented every day.

One of the reasons we're here, that we exist at all, is that Earth, cosmically speaking, is in a relatively peaceful place: orbiting our Sun in a near perfect circle.

I try to keep this in mind when tied in to a rope 75 feet up in a tree... The history of ideas about our place in the universe has been a long series of let-downs for those who like to believe we are special.

Anyone who has wrestled knows that it's the hardest thing in the world to do. Anyone who says something else is the hardest thing has never wrestled. That's what I have found. ... You don't wrestle because it's easy, you wrestle because it's hard. I don't do astrophysics because it's easy, I do it because it's hard. And I juxtapose the two in my mind, body, and soul all the time.

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