"If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shabby furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shabby philosophies. It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the wrapped meat inside it."

"

First of all, let’s clarify what the NASA budget is. Do you realize that the $850 billion dollar bailout, that sum of money is greater than the entire 50-year running budget of NASA?

And so when someone says, “We don’t have enough money for this space probe,” I’m asking, no, it’s not that you don’t have enough money, it’s that the distribution of money that you’re spending is warped in some way that you are removing the only thing that gives people something to dream about tomorrow.

You remember the 60s and 70s. You didn’t have to go more than a week before there’s an article in Life magazine, “The Home of Tomorrow,” “The City of Tomorrow,” “Transportation of Tomorrow”. All of that ended in the 1970s. After we stopped going to the Moon, it all ended. We stopped dreaming.

And so I worry that the decision that Congress makes doesn’t factor in the consequences of those decisions on tomorrow. Tomorrow’s gone. They’re playing for the quarterly report, they’re playing for the next election cycle, and that is mortgaging the actual future of this nation, and the rest of the world is going to pass us by.

"

"When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me-it still sometimes happens-and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don’t ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance… . That pure chance could be so generous and so kind… . That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time… . That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful… . The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful."

"Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

"Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?"

"Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you - it’s born with us the day that we are born."

"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

"Love the quite of the night time when the sun is in the deathly sea. I can feel my heart beating as I speed from the sense of time catching up with me. The sky set out like a pathway but who decides which path we take? As people drift into a dream world, I close my eyes as my hands shake. When i see a new day, who’s driving this anyway? I picture my own grave, cause fears got a hold on me."

"

You say you’re worried about children; I’m not worried about children, I’m worried about ‘grown-ups’. These are the ones who vote. These are the ones who tell you, ‘the world is coming to an end in 2012!’ Kids don’t say that, grown-ups do. Grown-ups say ‘read me my horoscope and tell me when I’ll find money tomorrow!’ Grown-ups say this, not children. Children do not read horoscopes. Children are perfectly happy counting through the number 13. Children aren’t afraid to walk under ladders. They see a black cat cross their path and they say ‘look! kitty, kitty’ and want to pet it, not run in the other direction. Children are not the problem here.

Kids are born curious. They are always exploring. We spend the first year of their life teaching them to walk and talk, and the rest of their life telling them to shut up and sit down.

Once you understand the role of innovation as an engine of economic growth, then you are left with no other choice but to value and respect not only those who go into sciences, but you value and respect the scientific literacy of the nation.

"

"The Republicans, who control the House and now have greater control of the Senate, have now decided — having tripled the debt in the 12 years before I took office and doubled it since I left — that it’s all of a sudden the biggest problem in the world."

"Casey Anthony was found not guilty of murdering her daughter, as the American public stands by in shock and awe. In other news, millions of sick and dying American children and adults still don’t have healthcare, to the shock and awe of absolutely nobody."

"I’m tired of hearing America is the best at this or the best at that all the frickin’ time. It’s a fat country with bad health care, bad politics, bad education, bad infrastructure, bad religion, a horrific income gap, a load of violent crime, moronic drug laws, rampant racism, people who deny the rampant racism, sexism, people who deny the rampant sexism, an active and overt hostility to higher education, and a population that consists of large blocs devoted to ideology over real-world pragmatic answers. And to top things off, it’s filled with the sort of people who give idiotic responses to all these facts by saying, “Well, if you don’t like, why don’t you leave?” Morons."

"They don’t get it. We love America just as much as they do. But in a different way. You see, they love America the way a four-year-old loves her mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a four-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad, and helping your loved one grow. Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world. That’s why we liberals want America to do the right thing. We know America is the hope of the world, and we love it and want it to do well."

"The theist and the scientist are rival interpreters of nature, the one retreats as the other advances."