I don't even think much about politicians. I think about the people in the audience who applaud the politicians. They are your fellow countrymen and they're the ones you live with - that should be who we target for education and enlightenment.

'As a fraction of your tax dollar today, what is the total cost of all spaceborne telescopes, planetary probes, the rovers on Mars, the International Space Station, the space shuttle, telescopes yet to orbit, and missions yet to fly?' Answer: one-half of one percent of each tax dollar. Half a penny. I'd prefer it were more: perhaps two cents on the dollar. Even during the storied Apollo era, peak NASA spending amounted to little more than four cents on the tax dollar.

In America, there are people who don't read science fiction but still think about tomorrow, so it's not only the force of science-fiction that makes you a tomorrow thinker.

The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.

Whenever people have used religious documents to make accurate predictions about our base knowledge of the physical world, they have been famously wrong.

Evidence my 14yr old daughter is geek-literate: In lieu of OK, one might type K while texting. She instead typed "Potassium".

One trait stands out in nearly all meteorites: metal; they've got it. So, the best way to find a meteorite is to hear it first.