I'm on a lot of nonprofit boards, but if I didn't enjoy it I wouldn't do it. I haven't yet done anything that's transformational in philanthropy. But I hope at some point to target two or three causes or organizations and really make transformational...
Being an astronaut is a wonderful career. I feel very privileged. But what I really hope for young people is that they find a career they're passionate about, something that's challenging and worthwhile.
So we have broad bipartisan support for the bill, and it's my hope that we can build on some of the things that have been talked about in Washington involving building a larger ownership society.
If we can just take a few companies, and use those as models, as examples, to show the rest of corporate America how they can become more competitive, that's what I'd like to do and that's what I hope to do.
What's interesting about Twitter and the influencers that someone follows - like, say, Shaquille O'Neal - is that they see someone who is using the exact same tools that they have access to, and I think that inspires this hope to be able to really en...
I hope that China will continue with space exploration. It would be logical to have international co-operation. I hope that it will come about and that I can be involved in it.
With documentary-film projects, you hope you highlight an area of concern people haven't thought about before. A lot of times, I'm asking myself - 'This seems to be a significant problem. What can be done that hasn't been done?'
You have to be there not for the fame and glory and recognition and being a page in a history book, but you have to be there because you believe your talent and ability can be applied effectively to operation of the spacecraft.
In the coming era of manned space exploration by the private sector, market forces will spur development and yield new, low-cost space technologies. If the history of private aviation is any guide, private development efforts will be safer, too.
The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far - the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We're obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully ...
We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we make today.
If you look back to the most spectacular blow ups in history, you can always tie them to a couple things: They were extraordinary complicated strategies that maybe even the practitioners themselves didn't understand, and they were overleveraged.
The history of science shows that theories are perishable. With every new truth that is revealed we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified.
I'm a person that just likes to speak the truth, and I don't understand why in America it's such a big deal that we won't read the Koran and we won't look at history.
We've got to map all of our ancient history before it's gone because, let's face it, if we don't have a common heritage to share, something to get excited about, then what are we living for?
Our democracy, our constitutional framework is really a kind of software for harnessing the creativity and political imagination for all of our people. The American democratic system was an early political version of Napster.
Only in South Africa could you have a change in government without civil war. If there wasn't the depth of love and caring among our people, this would not have happened.
Technologists come at a problem from the point of view that the system is working a certain way, and if I engage in that system and actually change the rules of the system, I can make it work a different way.
I'm not looking for a legacy, and you'll never shut up the critics. I've been around 50 years. When you're a catalyst for change, you make enemies - and I'm proud of the ones I've got.
So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms.
Many of us are experiencing a phase of change, shedding outdated patterns and liberating ourselves from the old by moving on to the new. The year 2012 is an important one for mankind, a pivotal year. The potential for this exists in the mere fact tha...
