The extreme sophistication of modern technology - wonderful though its benefits are - is, ironically, an impediment to engaging young people with basics: with learning how things work.

In future, children won't perceive the stars as mere twinkling points of light: they'll learn that each is a 'Sun', orbited by planets fully as interesting as those in our Solar system.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

It will not be humans who watch the sun's demise, six billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.

I think a few hundred years from now we'll start having the 'posthuman' era of different species.

It's better to read first rate science fiction than second rate science-it's a lot more fun, and no more likely to be wrong.

We need to broaden our sympathies both in space and time - and perceive ourselves as part of a long heritage, and stewards for an immense future.

Science is a part of culture. Indeed, it is the only truly global culture because protons and proteins are the same all over the world, and it's the one culture we can all share.

I hope that by 2050 the entire solar system will have been explored and mapped by flotillas of tiny robotic craft.

I'm not myself religious but have no wish to insult or denigrate those who are.

Crucial to science education is hands-on involvement: showing, not just telling; real experiments and field trips and not just "virtual reality".

We are not born into the world. We are born into something that we make into the world.

The ink was secret nectar, for Marin isn't married.

In business, three things are necessary: knowledge, temper, and time.

Confidence is the foundation of friendship. If we give it we will receive it.

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

I never lost confidence in myself, no matter what the years were like or the results.

―You realize I can hear you without the annoying intercom. Cookie and I both leaned forward and looked at each other through the doorway. ―But this is more fun, I said. ―More Star Trekkie.

Secrecy in science does not work. Withholding information does more damage to us than to our competitors.

I think every American actor wants to be a movie star. But I never wanted to do stupid movies, I wanted to do films.

Suzanne [Collins] was very involved in the development of the script. She wrote the first draft. She was very involved with Billy Ray, when he wrote his draft.