If we have the power to turn another planet into Earth, then we have the power to turn Earth back into Earth.

To believe in a universe as young as 6 or 7,000 years old is to extinguish the light from most of the galaxy.

When students cheat on exams, it's because our school system values grades more than students value learning.

So not enough people in this world, I think, carry a cosmic perspective with them. It could be life-changing.

Dinosaurs are extinct today because they lacked opposable thumbs and the brainpower to build a space program.

If you want to assert a truth, first make sure it's not just an opinion that you desperately want to be true.

If you only think of me during Black History Month, I must be failing as an educator and as an astrophysicist.

I remain unconvinced that anything other than rapid decomposition is the fate of my body and mind after death.

If you're scientifically literate, the world looks very different to you, and that understanding empowers you.

My view is that if your philosophy is not unsettled daily then you are blind to all the universe has to offer.

If you're really successful at bullshitting, it means you're not hanging around enough people smarter than you.

Today, in this, the 21st century, bedtime doesn't matter at all. All that matters is what you set for your DVR.

If each dead person became a ghost, there'd be more than 100 billion of them haunting us all. Creepy, but cool.

Math is the language of the universe. So the more equations you know, the more you can converse with the cosmos.

We live on this speck called Earth - think about what you might do, today or tomorrow - and make the most of it.

Imagination alone is not enough, because the reality of nature is far more wondrous than anything we can imagine

If we're going to affect policy, or affect attitudes, for me, the adults have always been the target population.

When I would lose matches, I fully respected the person who beat me, because they beat me. I can't blame anybody.

With automatic spell checkers running unleashed over what we compose, our era is that of correctly spelled typos.

The solar system should be viewed as our backyard, not as some sequence of destinations that we do one at a time.

The greatest teachers are the ones that turn a B student into an A student, or a failing student into a B student.

There's a lot of memorization that goes on in school. You memorize vocabulary words and all these sorts of things.

NASA has spin-offs, and it's a huge and very impressive list, including accurate and affordable LASIK eye surgery.

Passion is what gets you through the hardest times that might otherwise make strong men weak, or make you give up.

You could do math early, but there are no brilliant 16-year-old novelists. They don't know the human condition yet.

When scientifically investigating the natural world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier.

Before we start talking about genetic differences, you gotta come up with a system where there's equal opportunity.

We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically.

It may be that our cosmic curiosity... is a genetically-encoded force that we illuminate when we look up and wonder.

As important as the civil rights movement was, I think what will rise to the top is that we left Earth in that time.

Down there between our legs, it's like an entertainment complex in the middle of a sewage system. Who designed that?

I'm just recommending you find other things to base your spirituality on, rather than where science is yet to tread.

The first colony on Mars is not going to be built by a private company. How are you going to make money? You're not.

I'm often asked whether I believe in Global Warming. I now just reply with the question: "Do you believe in Gravity?"

Photons are accurately and legitimately described as waves and particles at the same time. They are genuine wavicles.

No matter what eyewitness testimony is in the court of law, it is the lowest form of evidence in the court of science.

The greatest of people that have ever been in society, they were never versions of someone else. They were themselves.

That's the point, to get the people who wouldn't otherwise think to eavesdrop on a conversation that involves science.

Who knows how dead Lazarus was? Was Lazarus decomposing in a six-foot grave when Jesus resurrected him? No, he wasn't.

In modern times, if the sole measure of what’s out there flows from your five senses then a precarious life awaits you.

In any city with lots of skyscrapers, lots of skyline, the moon seems bigger than it is. It's called the moon illusion.

God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.

If aliens did visit us, I'd be embarrassed to tell them we still dig fossil fuels from the ground as a source of energy.

As history has shown, pure science research ultimately ends up applying to something. We just don't know it at the time.

Italy valued cathedrals while Spain valued explorers. So worldwide, five times as many people speak Spanish than Italian.

People think about life from day-to-day rather than thinking about life as something that invents a new kind of tomorrow.

To achieve this density of a neutron star at home, just cram a herd of 50 million elephants into the volume of a thimble.

One of the most significant events in our distant past is still perhaps the greatest mystery: the origins of life itself.

Does the full moon affect people's behavior, you ask? Yup. It makes people think the full moon affects people's behavior.

Without new economies, our old economies get our jobs taken from them because everyone else has figured out how to do it.

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