Paul Davies Quotes

It's hard enougth to find intelligent life right here in Washington!

Finding intelligent life would encourage people and also of course the opportunity of learning a tremendous amount, but this is a danger. We might be so overwhelmed with knowledge and information, that we might be depressed or even become suicidal - because what's the point if they're thousands of years ahead of us? Why should we bother? - or become the ultimate couch potatoes.

I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.

That would be such a life-changing thing, for us all to know that there are other beings out there who we could potentially communicate with, or maybe we are listening to a signal that they transmitted hundreds of millennia ago.

Clearly, unless thinking beings inevitably wipe themselves out soon after developing technology, extraterrestrial intelligence could often be millions or billions of years in advance of us. We're the galaxy's noodling newbies.

Among the radio astronomers of SETI - the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - it's only sort-of a joke that the true hallmark of intelligent life is the creation of radio astronomy.

I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here.

We have never denied that it is possible, indeed probable, that other forms of life, even intelligent life, exist in the universe. But this is different from the belief that we are now being visited by extraterrestrial beings in spacecraft, that they are abducting people, and the there is a vast government cover-up.

I think it's fantastically narcissistic to believe that in the entire universe, with all of the planetary systems that we've already discovered and the countless others that are out there, that we are the only forms of life. Now, the real question is not are there other forms of life out there, but are there other intelligent forms of life out there right now. Because the universe is not only really big but it's also really long. It's been around for a long time; it's going to be around for a long time.

It is my thesis that flying saucers are real and that they are space ships from another solar system. I think that they possibly are manned by intelligent observers who are members of a race that may have been investigating our Earth for centuries. I think that they possibly have been sent out to conduct systematic, long-range investigations, first of men, animals, vegetation, and more recently of atomic centers, armaments an centers of armament production.

For all we know, the aliens have already done this and unwittingly concluded that there was no intelligent life on Earth. They would now be looking elsewhere. A more humbling possibility would be if aliens had become aware of the technologically proficient species that now inhabits Earth, yet they had drawn the same conclusion.

I've been saying for a long time that I'm hoping to find intelligent life in Washington.

I don't see why there is no intelligent alien life in the universe.

Intelligent life can't be all that common because it's really rare on Earth and especially since we define ourselves to be intelligent. But in the eyes of an alien coming here who has the technology to make it here, they might observe us and conclude that there's no sign of intelligent life on Earth.

NASA even sent Chuck Berry's music on a space probe searching for intelligent life in outer space. Well, now, if they're out there, they're duck walking

We may be living at that moment, on the cusp, when we go from being a species that feels a kind of loneliness in the cosmos to actually one sometime in the not too distant future being able to confirm the existence of other intelligent life.

Chances are, when we meet intelligent life forms in outer space they're going to be descended from predators.

Woody Allen once said: "You know there must be intelligent life in space. The question is do they have good Chinese restaurants and do they deliver?" Which is really a joke, but it is also a very profound remark. When you say do they have good Chinese restaurants, what you're really saying is, "How much are they like us?" And when you say, "Do they deliver?" you're saying, "Can they get here?" Both of which are profound questions. And at the present, we have no answers.

It is surely unreasonable to credit that only one small star in the immensity of the universe is capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. But we shall not get to them and they will not come to us.

The energy requirements for interstellar travel are so great that it is inconceivable to me that any creatures piloting their ships across the vast depths of space would do so only in order to play games with us over a period of decades. If they want to make contact, they would make contact; if not, they would save their energy and go elsewhere.

I keep wondering if, say, there is intelligent life on other planets, the scientists argue that something like two percent of the other planets have the conditions, the physical conditions, to support life in the way it happened here, did Christ visit each and every planet, go through the same routine, the Agony in the Garden, the Crucifixion, and so on.

Extraterrestrial intelligence could have sent DNA-seed packets out through space to plant life on hospitable planets such as earth.

Although whenever you have intelligent life in the presence of large explosions, a safe bet is that the intelligent life is responsible for the large explosion.

and we’ll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere … and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys.

The best proof that there's intelligent life in the universe is that it hasn't come here.