We didn't know the importance of home computers before the Internet. We had them mostly for fun, then the Internet came along and was enabled by all the PCs out there.

In 12 or 15 years, there will be routine, affordable space tourism not just in the U.S. but in a lot of countries.

Usually the wacky people have the breakthroughs. The smart people dont.

A NASA astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut can't be creative. He has to follow a predetermined detailed checklist written by an engineer and if he gets a little creative he'll never fly again.

I believe that research, that you can claim that you're doing research only if half of the people, and I'm talking about half of the experts, believe that the goal is impossible.

A true creator researches how to have confidence in nonsense.

NASA's myriad failures are in many ways the natural consequence of a catastrophic combination of bureaucracy, monopoly, and a calcifying aversion to the kind of risk necessary for innovation.

Everything looks nonsensical before it works.

Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding

I have a hunch the most important reason we're going to space is not known now.

Look at the aerospace industry as it was just after the Kennedy talk. We were hiring like crazy. We were trying to get people graduated from college. Hey, you got to go to the program. We need you.

If you don't have the confidence to ask, you will never have the confidence to convince.

A large part of me is pure nebbish - plain, dull, uninteresting. There's a more flamboyant part, too. Obviously.

I have a doggy, a Japanese Akita, who I live to play with.

So long as the opposing forces are at the outset approximately equal in numbers and moral and there are no flanks to turn, a long struggle for supremacy is inevitable.

I'm not interested in an imaginary world

In a seriously intended intellectual emancipation a person's mute passions and cravings also hope to find their advantage.

I was the front man of the choir and then when I was 12 and I was the leadsinger of my highschool groups.

Strong women leave big hickies

I have a weakness for buttons. I'm always collecting ornate and nicely decorated ones.