“All one can really leave one’s children is what’s inside their heads. Education, in other words, and not earthly possessions, is the ultimate legacy, the only thing that cannot be taken away.”

The logistic requirements for a large, elaborate mission to Mars are no greater that those for a minor military operation extending over a limited theatre of war.

It is in scientific honesty that I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life and man in the science classroom. It would be an error to overlook the possibility that the universe was planned rather than happening by chance.

There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program – your tax-dollar will go further.

The same forces of nature which enable us to fly to the stars, enable us also to destroy our star.

Crash programs fail because they are based on theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby in a month.

To simply dismiss the concept of God as being unscientific is to violate the very objectivity of science itself.

Everybody knows what the moon is, everybody knows what this decade is, and everybody can tell a live astronaut who returned from the moon from one who didn’t.

Don’t tell me that man doesn’t belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go – and he’ll do plenty well when he gets there.

Science does not have a moral dimension. It is like a knife. If you give it to a surgeon or a murderer, each will use it differently.

The best computer is a man, and it’s the only one that can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.

It was very successful, but it fell on the wrong planet.

Looking back, nothing seems so simple than a utopian vision realised.

I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science.

I believe in an immortal soul. Science has proved that nothing disintegrates into nothingness. Life and soul, therefore, cannot disintegrate into nothingness, and so are immortal.

The greatest gain from space travel consists in the extension of our knowledge. In a hundred years this newly won knowledge will pay huge and unexpected dividends.

If we were to start today on an organized and well-supported space program I believe a practical passenger rocket can be built and tested within ten years.

We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons… but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.

Real love is when you become selfless and you are more concerned about your mate’s or children’s egos than your own. You’re now a giver instead of a taker.

A child, like all other human beings, has inalienable rights.

I understood somehow my mother’s frustration. And that it was no good not only for her, but for her children or her husband, that she didn’t have a real use of her ability.

Today the problem that has no name is how to juggle work, love, home and children.

Every disease is a musical problem; every cure is a musical solution.

There is absolutely no evidence that it is harmful to children if their mother’s health, well-being and autonomy and control of her own destiny is maximized by work outside the home.

We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: ‘I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.’