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

To make any future that we dreamt up real requires creative scientists, engineers, and technologists to make it happen. If people are not within your midst who dream about tomorrow - with the capacity to bring tomorrow into the present - then the country might as well just recede back into the cave because that's where we're headed.

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

The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.

As a scientist, I want to go to Mars and back to asteroids and the Moon because I'm a scientist. But I can tell you, I'm not so naive a scientist to think that the nation might not have geopolitical reasons for going into space.

One of my great laments is that education today seems to have... be less about passion and more about process, more about tactic or technique.