“I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms that we can't conceive. And there could, of course, be forms of intelligence beyond human capacity – beyond as much as we are beyond a chimpanzee”

“I'd like to widen people's awareness of the tremendous timespan lying ahead--for our planet, and for life itself. Most educated people are aware that we're the outcome of nearly 4bn years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sun's demise, 6bn years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.”

“God invented space so that not everything had to happen in Princeton.”

“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.”

“It was the end of the world.And we are going beyond it.”

“We must think beyond ourselves”

“Beyond a certain point, that was all a mother could do for her children - Hang around long enough to drive them crazy.”