"I think [contacting an alien civilization] would be a disaster. The extraterrestrials would probably be far in advance of us. The history of advanced races meeting more primitive people on this planet…"

"We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special."

"The laws of nature are the same everywhere in the universe."

"The greatest achievement of the human race would be to understand the universe."

"The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect an underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired."