“The strange thing about grinding that might surprise many people is that you can grind things and shape them using materials that are generally somewhat softer than the thing you’re grinding and shaping.”

I stand by my assertions that although you can know what happens to any individual species that you modify, you cannot be certain what will happen to the ecosystem.

NASA is an engine of innovation and inspiration as well as the world’s premier space exploration agency, and we are well served by politicians working to keep it that way, instead of turning it into a mere jobs program, or worse, cutting its budget.

Without an end to the burning of fossil fuels, coal especially, most of us will live shorter lives. I’m hopeful, but very, very concerned.

Tax dollars intended for science education must not be used to teach creationism as any sort of real explanation of nature, because any observation or process of inference about our origin and the nature of the universe disproves creationism in every respect.

My father was a very good Boy Scout. He was very skilled with knots, and he showed me how to tie a bow tie.

If you just take a single human and put him or her in the forest he or she might not do very well without some sort of education which he got or she got from some tribe.

When we see the shadow on our images, are we seeing the time 11 minutes ago on Mars? Or are we seeing the time on Mars as observed from Earth now? It’s like time travel problems in science fiction. When is now; when was then?

Winter lingered so long in the lap of Spring that it occasioned a great deal of talk.

Our goal in science is to discover universal laws of nature. That pursuit fills me with wonder.

The most serious problem facing humankind is climate change. All of these people breathing and burning our atmosphere has led to an extraordinarily dangerous situation.

It fills me with joy to know that we can pursue these answers. It is an astonishing thing that we are — you and I are one of the ways the universe knows itself.

Unlike science, creationism cannot predict anything, and it cannot provide satisfactory answers about the past.

People get a lot out of being religious. They have strong senses of community and mutual support. So, what’s not to love [there]?

Think how fortunate we are to know this much. But think also of all that’s yet to be discovered. Here’s hoping the deep answers to the deep questions-from the nature of consciousness to the origin of life-will be found in not too much more time.

Apparently there is redundancy in memory: You store the same memory in different parts of your brain for accessing at different speeds. That speed would depend on the frequency of use and the importance of the knowledge.

There’s nothing I believe in more strongly than getting young people interested in science and engineering, for a better tomorrow, for all humankind.

The man that thinks he loves his mistress for her own sake is mightily mistaken.

I guess I have a little bit of an ego. I’m confidently cocky, you might say.

As human beings, don’t we need questions without answers as well as questions with answers, questions that we might someday answer and questions that we can never answer?

You might be performing on a five-by-five stage in front of 12 people.

Like the idea that every night might be the night before the world ends.

It’s harder than you might think to squander millions of dollars, but a flawed software development process is a tool well suited to the job.

American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage.

Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?