The prediction I can make with the highest confidence is that the most amazing discoveries will be the ones we are not today wise enough to foresee.

There is a lurking fear that some things are not “meant" to be known, that some inquiries are too dangerous for human beings to make.

In the deepest sense the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a search for ourselves.

Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid.

The Romans called the Christians atheists. Why? Well, the Christians had a god of sorts, but it wasn't a real god. They didn't believe in the divinity of apotheosized emperors or Olympian gods. They had a peculiar, different kind of god. So it was very easy to call people who believed in a different kind of god atheists. And that general sense that an atheist is anybody who doesn't believe exactly as I do prevails in our own time.

The prediction I can make with the highest confidence is that the most amazing discoveries will be the ones we are not today wise enough to foresee.

There are wonders enough out there without our inventing any.