In physics, opinions don't matter, only demonstrated experiments. The day the fellow succeeds, if ever, he won't need anybody else's opinion.

I didn't even know there were stars to look at to not see. If you don't know that they're there, you don't know that you're missing them.

I think science has a better story to tell than anyone else has been able to tell and that's because it's based on the rigorous winnowing that science and scientists are always doing in order to find out what's really happening. I think it's really good to encourage generally our ability to tell stories and that's a great skill that we come by naturally, so I'm excited about that.

Astronomers do not commonly use Venereal, in favor of the less contagious-sounding Venutian. Blame the medical community, who snatched the word long before astronomers had any good use for it. I suppose you can't blame the doctors. Venus is the goddess of beauty and love, so she ought to be the goddess of its medical consequences.

Seventy percent of Earth's surface is water and over 99 percent is uninhabited, so you would expect nearly all impactors to hit either the ocean or desolate regions on Earth's surface. So why do movie meteors have such good aim?

When I reach to the edge of the universe, I do so knowing that along some paths of cosmic discovery, there are times when, at least for now, one must be content to love the questions themselves.

So what is true for life itself is no less true for the universe: knowing where you came from is no less important than knowing where you are going.