If this is the only planet on which not only life, but intelligent life, has arisen, that would be very unusual.

If you took all the sand from all the beaches, all the desserts, and all the oceans and called that the Universe, our whole solar system would be less than one grain of sand.

Our brains are wired to interpret shapes as faces and bodies. That's why people see the Virgin Mary in the clouds or even in cheese sandwiches. It's your cytoplasm, not some strange ectoplasm.

The search for extra-terrestrial life is a failure until that moment when it suddenly becomes a success.

Despite the impression you may have from watching too much TV, movies are not about reproducing reality. Theyre about telling stories.

No heating system can deliver perfectly uniform temperatures throughout a house, and drafts can magnify the perceived difference in temperatures. Try walking around with a thermometer.

If you still believe that aliens would travel hundreds of light years to carve temporary graffiti in our wheat, then your imagination is one of the seven wonders of the world, and should be bronzed.

It bears mentioning that the Milky Way is only one of 150 billion galaxies visible to our telescopes - and each of these will have its own complement of planets.

Everything you see is filtered through your visual system (imperfect) and your brain (also imperfect, despite what your mom told you). Witness testimony is the worst kind of evidence in science.

Typically, only about 2 percent of the American populace tunes in to PBS's 'Nova' series - the most successful science show on the tube. 'Survivor' and 'X Factor' get twice the ratings.

A practical way to travel between the stars is a must-have for space opera, and a sine qua non for our frequently vaunted future as a galactic society.

Associations must evolve if they are to survive into the future.

Nature is usually wrong.

I think the greatest legacy of the 1960s was the general feeling that not only can you fight the powers that be, but you can win.

In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.

If there is one thing I have learned during my years as a professional, it is that the only thing constant about golf is its inconstancy.

I have a very simple approach in career: You work with the people you love.

I have this propensity to just come out and say things. That's how I am in real life.

Nate Silver is now forecasting Oscar winners. The only area of life in which he has no expertise, ironically, is life itself.

When men do not run they are likely to die prematurely from dysfunction of the heart and vascular systems or from disabling chronic disease.

Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements.