Life cannot have had a random beginning. ... The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10 to the 40,000 power, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.

Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance.

A superintellect has monkeyed with physics.

Well, we now have such a photograph... Has any new idea been let loose? It certainly has. You will have noticed how suddenly everybody has become seriously concerned to protect the natural environment... It seems to me more than a coincidence that this awareness should have happened at exactly the moment man took his first step into space.

The man who voyages strange seas must of necessity be a little unsure of himself. It is the man with the flashy air of knowing everything, who is always with it, that we should beware of.

Once I had learnt my twelve times table (at the age of three) it was downhill all the way.

A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.