Imagine a world of nine billion people with clean water, nutritious food, affordable housing, personalized education, top-tier medical care, and nonpolluting, ubiquitous energy. Building this better world is humanity's grandest challenge.

The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us are going to the stars.

Super-ambitious goals tend to be unifying and energizing to people; but only if they believe there's a chance of success.

Every generation feels it has the problems that will destroy it. That's because we can perceive them a long time before we have the ability to fix them.

My childhood dreams were focused on being part of the effort to make humanity a multiplanetary species.

I'm not saying we don't have our set of problems - climate crisis, species extinction, water and energy shortage - we surely do. But ultimately we knock them down.

What opened up the American West was the fact that you owned the real estate. You owned the gold mines, the oil wells. The creation of these, back then, million dollar industries drove the railroads and eventually the airlines to provide this kind of transportation.