Quote collection
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"Quantum physics fluctuates all the time. But now the fluctuations are not just particles coming into and out of existence, which happens all the time. It's whole universes coming into and out of existence."
"Once you've got the makings of a star, gravity draws leftover gas and dust into a giant swirling disk. The dust continues to stick together, clumping into rocky asteroids, which eventually become orbiting rocky planets. And voila: a solar system!"
"You could do math early, but there are no brilliant 16-year-old novelists. They don't know the human condition yet."
"FM signals and those of broadcast television...travel out to space at the speed of light. Any eavesdropping alien civilization will know all about our TV programs (probably a bad thing), will hear all our FM music (probably a good thing), and know nothing of the politics of AM talk-show hosts (probably a safe thing)."
"You can't be a writer and have nothing to write about. You have to have life experiences."
"That is a cosmic perspective, that's correct. And in tandem with that, you will never find people who truly grasp the cosmic perspective such as the entire community of astrophysicists leading nations into battle. No, that doesn't happen. When you have a cosmic perspective, there's this little speck called Earth and you say you're going to do what? You're on this side of a line in the sand and you want to kill people for what?"
"In the first year of a child's life we teach them to walk and talk. And then for the rest of their lives we want them to sit down and be quiet."
"People say, oh we just need charismatic leaders to continue on to Mars. Now we've gone to the moon, of course Mars is next. No. Mars was never, of course, next. It is next if you think we went to the moon because we're explorers, but if you know we went to the moon because we were at war then we're never going to Mars. There's no military reason to do it, to justify the expenditure."
"When Kennedy said, 'Let's go to the moon,' we didn't yet have a vehicle that wouldn't kill you on launch. He said we'll land a man on the moon in eight years and bring him back. That was an audacious goal to put forth in front of the American people."
"There is a theorem that colloquially translates, You cannot comb the hair on a bowling ball. ... Clearly, none of these mathematicians had Afros, because to comb an Afro is to pick it straight away from the scalp. If bowling balls had Afros, then yes, they could be combed without violation of mathematical theorems."
"I would rather enlighten the electorate so that when it's time for them to put somebody in Congress, it will be self-evident that they will embrace the message and tools and discovery of science in a way that can transform our culture and even our civilization."
"Revelation replaced investigation."
"Last I checked, Bill Gates was worth $50 billion. If the average employed adult, who is walking in a hurry, will pick up a quarter from the sidewalk, but not a dime, then the corresponding amount of money given their relative wealth that Bill Gates would ignore if he saw it lying on the street is $25,000."
"We are not figuratively, but literally stardust."
"Some air you inhale was exhaled by Cleopatra."
"Hunting for meteorites is like trying to find a pebble on miles of beach."
"You ask people, do you pray to [a person or] God. If you say yes to that, you're religious by, presumably, anybody's standards of your conduct. And it's the yes to that question that applies to 40% of scientists. So, there're plenty of atheists who are scientists or not scientists. There maybe a conflict but many people in this country coexist in both worlds."
"Thomas Jefferson basically secularized Jesus."
"In fact, I think it was the philosopher Hume who argued that it's far more likely that a miracle is a new physical phenomenon that we have yet to discover and have now discovered in that moment than it is a spiritual force coming down from God making something happen in front of you."
"One of the things that fascinates me most is when people are so charmed by the universe that it becomes part of their artistic output."