Many people find the universe confusing - it's not.

Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.

One is always a long way from solving a problem until one actually has the answer.

Only a very few would allow creatures like us to exist. Thus our presence selects out from this vast array only those universes that are compatible with our existence. Although we are puny and insignificant on the scale of the cosmos, this makes us in a sense the lords of creation.

There are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end ofthe search for the ultimate laws of nature.

The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.

Many badly needed goals, like fusion and cancer cure, would be achieved much sooner if we invested more.