There's a lot of memorization that goes on in school. You memorize vocabulary words and all these sorts of things.

It seems that we're better at finding someone to blame for our problems than we are at finding creative solutions to fix them.

Some molecules - ammonia, carbon dioxide, water - show up everywhere in the universe, whether life is present or not. But others pop up especially in the presence of life itself. Among the biomarkers in Earth's atmosphere are ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons from aerosol sprays, vapor from mineral solvents, escaped coolants from refrigerators and air conditioners, and smog from the burning of fossil fuels. No other way to read that list: sure signs of the absence of intelligence.

The most successful scientists in the history of the world are those who posed the right questions

I never got into 'Star Wars.' Maybe because they made no attempt to portray real physics. At all.

The day that you stop looking - because you're content God did it - I don't need you in the lab. You're useless on the frontier of understanding the nature of the world.

If Mars formed life, then life on Earth could have been seeded by life on Mars, making every life form on Earth descended from Martians.