My dad was an engineer and so I had this picture of science and technology and pursuits of the mind as being more impressive than artistic pursuits which I saw a as kind of frivolous.

I was really bright as a kid and tested well and it was clear that I was going to get scholarships to any schools I wanted. My dad always said I could be an engineer at that time it was the elite of society: steady job working in science which was then the answer to every problem we had. It was kind of a mandate. Kind of a dream he had for me.

When I was born in 1970 with a rare genetic disorder called spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita (SED) medical science wasn't what it is today and my mum and dad were treated terribly by the medical profession.

And then before going back for my sophomore year I decided to change my major to arts and sciences and my dad cut a deal with me: He said if I'd quit school he'd pay my rent for the next three years as if I were in school.

I had bohemian parents in Seattle in the last '60s living in a houseboat. My dad wrote science fiction novels and painted big murals and oil paintings.

My dad was always such a frustrated artist. He always worked very hard to support his family doing a bunch of ridiculous jobs. He wanted to be a painter but then he also wrote science-fiction novels in his spare time.

In this work I have received the opposition of a number of men who only advocate the unobtainable because the immediately possible is beyond their moral courage administrative ability and their political prescience.

Remember in 1973 the same science chatter said that the coming Ice Age is going to occur we're going to lose millions of people. And the politicians knew how to solve it they just didn't have the courage to solve it they were going to put coal dust on the Arctic.

The enchanting charms of this sublime science reveal only to those who have the courage to go deeply into it.

Conscience is the root of all true courage if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience.

If we are to survive we must have ideas vision and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.

Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

I was horrible at science and math. I couldn't pass a test to save my life! I'm surprised that it didn't take me until I was 20 to graduate. That's why my role is so cool - Grissom is the complete opposite of me.

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.

I wrote somewhere during the Cold War that I sometimes wish the Iron Curtain were much taller than it is so that you could see whether the development of science with no communication was parallel on the two sides. In this case it certainly wasn't.

Significant officials at publicly traded companies are casually and cavalierly engaged in insider trading. Because insider trading has as one of its elements communication it doesn't take rocket science to realize it's nice to have the communication on tape.

I follow my conscience - and this is upsetting to some people but I maintain the conscience is going to be the only thing between us and communication in the future.

Making movies is not rocket science. It's about relationships and communication and strangers coming together to see if they can get along harmoniously productively and creatively. That's a challenge. When it works it's fantastic and will lift you up. When it doesn't work it's almost just as fascinating.

Science may never come up with a better office communication system than the coffee break.

In science the important thing is to modify and change one's ideas as science advances.

Many people and governments share the mistaken belief that science with new ingenious devices and techniques can rescue us from the troubles we face without our having to mend our ways and change our patterns of activity. This is not so.

A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality.

Physics does not change the nature of the world it studies and no science of behavior can change the essential nature of man even though both sciences yield technologies with a vast power to manipulate the subject matters.

Science arose from poetry... when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.