A NASA astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut can't be creative. He has to follow a predetermined detailed checklist written by an engineer and if he gets a little creative he'll never fly again.

In 12 or 15 years, there will be routine, affordable space tourism not just in the U.S. but in a lot of countries.

Usually the wacky people have the breakthroughs. The smart people dont.

I believe that research, that you can claim that you're doing research only if half of the people, and I'm talking about half of the experts, believe that the goal is impossible.

A true creator researches how to have confidence in nonsense.

NASA's myriad failures are in many ways the natural consequence of a catastrophic combination of bureaucracy, monopoly, and a calcifying aversion to the kind of risk necessary for innovation.

Everything looks nonsensical before it works.

Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding

I have a hunch the most important reason we're going to space is not known now.

Look at the aerospace industry as it was just after the Kennedy talk. We were hiring like crazy. We were trying to get people graduated from college. Hey, you got to go to the program. We need you.

It's not good enough for us to have generations of kids that ... look forward to a better version of a cell phone with a video in it. They need to look forward to exploration.

He specialized in the murder of dreams, Hazel Grace...

I didn't really sign up to be a celebrity, I only signed up to be a writer.

It's not like I'm some kind of veteran and there is this huge age gap. I identify with them more off the field. I need to set an example, which is great, and I look forward to doing just that.

You've seen what you've seen; you've felt what you've felt. Ideology is for people who don't trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world.

Ambition is not in itself an evil; nor is he to be condemned whose spirit prompts him to seek fame by worthy and honourable ways.

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere.

"Why doesn't the fellow who says, "I'm no speechmaker," let it go at that instead of giving a demonstration? "

If you didn't have someone to hate, you wouldn't know what to do with yourself, would you?

As long as a man faces life hopefully, confidently, triumphantly he is not a failure