Seti Quotes

“The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”
― Carl Sagan, Contact

“A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious subjects are in disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of consciousness, the workings of the brain, the origin of aggression, the origin of language, the origin of life on earth, SETI and life on other worlds...this is all great stuff. Wonderful stuff. You can argue it interminably. But it can't be contradicted, because nobody knows the answer to any of these topics.”
― Michael Crichton

“We, all of us, are what happens when a primordial mixture of hydrogen and helium evolves for so long that it begins to ask where it came from.”
― Jill Tarter

“Why a journey into space? Because science is now learning that the infinite reaches of our universe probably teem with as much life and adventure as Earth's own oceans and continents. Our galaxy alone is so incredibly vast that the most conservative mathematical odds still add up to millions of planets almost identical to our own — capable of life, even intelligence and strange new civilizations. Alien beings that will range from the fiercely primitive to the incredibly exotic intelligence which will far surpass Mankind. (The Hollywood Reporter, Sept. 8, 1966)”
― Gene Roddenberry

“Your story -my story, our story- began billions of years ago," she says. "But that probably doesn't come first to your mind when you wake up in the morning." A pause fills the air-conditioned room. "We need to change that."
[...]
"We are intimately connected with these faraways times and faraways places," she continues, "because it takes a cosmos to make a human".”
― Sarah Scoles, Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

“The notion of a universe filled with cowards... who stay cowardly FOREVER, no matter how advanced they become... seems no[t] only unimaginative and temporally myopic, but deeply dismal, as well.”
― David Brin

“Sure, it is possible we’re on the only world to host life in all of cosmic history.

Science has, of course, been arguing about the existence of life on other worlds for centuries. But the explosion in our knowledge about other worlds sheds new light on this question, revealing something remarkable.

The discovery of all those new planets means we can only be unique if the laws of the universe are strongly biased against life and intelligence.

In other words, there are so many planets in the right place for life to form that the burden now falls on the pessimists.

It’s up to the naysayers to demonstrate how, with so many worlds and so many possibilities over the whole of cosmic space and time, we somehow are the first and the only.”
― Adam Frank, Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth

“In other words, pretty much every star you see in the night sky hosts at least one planet.

The next time you find yourself outside at night, take a moment to stop and consider the implications of this result as you gaze at all those pinpricks of light.

Every one of them hosts at least one world, and most stars will have more than one planet. Solar systems are the rule and not the exception. They’re everywhere.”
― Adam Frank, Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth

“In other words, what were the chances that ours is the only civilization ever? Putting in the exoplanet data, we found the answer to be 10 –22 , or one in ten billion trillion.

We called this number the “pessimism line"

To understand how to think about the pessimism line, imagine you were handed a very big bag of Goldilocks-zone planets.

Our results say the only way human beings are unique as a civilization-building species would be if you pulled out ten billion trillion planets and not one of them had a civilization.

That’s because Kepler has shown us that there must be ten billion trillion Goldilocks-zone planets in the universe.”
― Adam Frank, Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth

“Maybe the aliens are looking for the civilisations that don’t send out the SETI signals.”
― J.L. Haynes

“Finding just one flower instead of thousands of crocodiles on an unknown planet would make human beings much happier because flowers symbolize the things that make a person most human: Elegance, serenity, peace, beauty, art, love!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan