If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.
We are made of stellar ash. Our origin and evolution have been tied to distant cosmic events. The exploration of the cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery.
I believe that in every person is a kind of circuit which resonates to intellectual discovery-and the idea is to make that resonance work.
Science is not perfect. It’s often misused; it’s only a tool, but it’s the best tool we have. Self-correcting, ever changing, applicable to everything: with this tool, we vanquish the impossible.
Looking at fires when high, by the way, especially through one of those prism kaleidoscopes which image their surroundings, is an extraordinarily moving and beautiful experience.
Not all birds can fly. What separates the flyers from the walkers is the ability to take off.
The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls.
The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses.
It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri, and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us – but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses.
In the deepest sense the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a search for ourselves.
A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet.
We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock.
We are the product of 4.5 billion years of fortuitous, slow biological evolution. There is no reason to think that the evolutionary process has stopped. Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation.
For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness.
What counts is not what sounds plausible, not what we would like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but only what is supported by hard evidence rigorously and skeptically examined. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.
The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it’s just the best we have. And to abandon it, with its skeptical protocols, is the pathway to a dark age.
It is all a matter of time scale. An event that would be unthinkable in a hundred years may be inevitable in a hundred million.
The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean.
I set before you two ways: You can use your technology to destroy yourselves or to carry you to the planets and the stars. It’s up to you.