From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-04-26:
Hawking compared people who don't want to spend money on human space exploration to those who opposed the journey of Christopher Columbus in 1492.
"The discovery of the New World made a profound difference to the old. Just think we wouldn't have had a Big Mac or KFC."
-- Stephen Hawking, astrophysicist, from a report of his lecture at George Washington University on April 21, 2008.
[ http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-St
ephen-Hawking.html]
(submitted to the mailing list by David Bergman)