"The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program." — Larry Niven.
"The exploration and ultimate colonization of the solar system is the only future worthy of truly great nations at this time in history. The Soviets, who cannot even feed themselves, seem to understand this." — John S. Powers.
"Crash programs fail because they are based on theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby in a month." — Wernher von Braun.
"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering." — Arthur C. Clarke.
"During the heat of the space race in the 1960's, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration decided it needed a ball point pen to write in the zero gravity confines of its space capsules. After considerable research and development, the Astronaut Pen was developed at a cost of about $1 million U.S. The pen worked and also enjoyed some modest success as a novelty item back here on Earth. The Soviet Union, faced with the same problem, used a pencil."
"The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy." — Steven Weinberg.
"Electrical force is defined as something which causes motion of electrical charge; an electrical charge is something which exerts electric force." — Arthur Eddington (1882-1944), British astronomer.
"The faster you go, the shorter you are." — Albert Einstein about Relativity.
"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." — Albert Einstein.
"The physicist's greatest tool is his wastebasket." — Albert Einstein
"I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." — Stephen Jay Gould
"We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future." — Max Planck (1858-1947), German physicist.
"People must understand that science is inherently neither a potential for good nor for evil. It is a potential to be harnessed by man to do his bidding." — Glenn T. Seaborg (1912- ), US physicist.
"Classical physics has been superseded by quantum theory: quantum theory is verified by experiments. Experiments must be described in terms of classical physics." — C. F. von Weizsäcker (1912- ), German physicist and philosopher.
"Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." — Richard Feynman.
"The human race likes to give itself airs. One good volcano can produce more greenhouse gases in a year than the human race has in its entire history." — Ray Bradbury.
"It is odd, but on the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics." — Richard Feynman.
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." — Albert Einstein.
"Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science." — Henri Poincaré