There's a passage about 'rivers of molten rock that wound their way... until they cooled and lay like twisted dragon-shapes vomited from the tormented earth.' That's a perfect description: how did Tolkien know, a quarter century before anyone ever saw a picture of Io? Talk about Nature imitating Art.

The phenomenon of UFO doesn't say anything about the presence of intelligence in space. It just shows how rare it is here on the earth.

The West needs to relearn what the rest of the world has never forgotten - that there is nothing sinful in leisure as long as it does not degenerate into mere sloth.

The fact that we have not yet found the slightest evidence for life - much less intelligence - beyond this Earth does not surprise or disappoint me in the least. Our technology must still be laughably primitive, we may be like jungle savages listening for the throbbing of tom-toms while the ether around them carries more words per second than they could utter in a lifetime.

A wise man once said that all human activity is a form of play. And the highest form of play is the search for Truth, Beauty and Love. What more is needed? Should there be a ‘meaning’ as well, that will be a bonus? If we waste time looking for life’s meaning, we may have no time to live — or to play.

Space can be mapped and crossed and occupied without definable limit; but it can never be conquered.

Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?