Intelligent Life Quotes

Will searching for distant messages work? Is there intelligent life out there? The SETI effort is worth continuing, but our common-sense beacons approach seems more likely to answer those questions. ~ Gregory Benford

Evolution cannot avoid bringing intelligent life ultimately to an awareness of one thing above all else and that one thing is futility. ~ Cormac McCarthy

I subscribe to the anthropic principle: there are an infinite number of infinite universes, each with slightly different physical laws.

Only some of them have the right parameters, such as gravity the right strength to allow stars to be born and live long. Where the charge on the electron is right to allow complex molecules to form, etc.

Ours is one that allows intelligent life to form, so that the universe may wonder at itself. We *are* the universe, in wonder of itself. -- Google: "Anthropic principle ~ William Donelson

The reason evolution bestows all intelligent life with a desire to climb higher is far more profound than more base needs, even though we still do not understand its real purpose. Mountains are universal and we are all standing at the feet of mountains. ~ Liu Cixin

I'll bet when aliens see the ring of garbage orbiting our planet they just keep going in the search for intelligent life ~ Johnny Moscato

I firmly disagree with anyone who says humans are the most advanced, or the most intelligent species on the planet. In fact, only three animals have ever threatened to kill me: humans, their dogs, and a particularly aggressive species of house spider. ~ Israel Morrow

There is a universal, intelligent, life force that exists within everyone and everything. It resides within each one of us as a deep wisdom, an inner knowing. We can access this wonderful source of knowledge and wisdom through our intuition, an inner sense that tells us what feels right and true for us at any given moment. ~ Shakti Gawain

I would argue that in any habitable zone that doesn't boil or freeze, intelligent life is going to emerge because intelligence is convergent. ~ Simon Conway Morris

Don't try to be brave when it is enough to be intelligent. ~ Paulo Coelho

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. ~ Douglas Adams

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth. ~ Graham Chapman

The seemingly insuperable difficulties of deep-space travel suggest an intention to keep us fixed at home in our own solar system, and the physical nature of our part of the Universe, as well as the basic rules of physics and chemistry, have a warning look about them, like barriers designed to isolate intelligent life. This means that for us, unlike the situation for humble microorganisms, deep-space travel is probably a stark impossibility. ~ Fred Hoyle

Men, discouraged by their failure to accomplish exactly what they desire, often speak of their lives as purposeless, but it is idle talk, for, in fact, no intelligent life which concerns itself vigorously and properly with the things about it can be said to be purposeless. Such a life adheres, automatically, to the law of progression, and therefore moves toward a great destiny of supreme power and accompanying joys. The only purposeless life is the one that does not use its faculties. It matters little what tasks men perform in life, if only they do them well and will all their strength. In the eternal plan they are given progressive value. In an infinite universe, one cannot possibly learn all or do all, at once. A beginning must be made somewhere and corner by corner, department by department, space by space, all will be known and conquered. In the end, all must be explored, and whether one begins in the east or the west cannot matter much. The big concern is the extent to which a man offers himself, mind and body, to his worthwhile work. Upon that will growth depend. ~ John A. Widtsoe

have long been under the delusion that we are somehow autonomous from the rest of nature, elevated above all of earth's creatures. So terrified are we of losing our exalted status, we cling to the anthropocentric notion that we are the only intelligent life on earth. ~ A.J. Colucci

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. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Death is not necessarily what gives meaning to life LIFE gives meaning to life, and what we do with life, which is to create knowledge like music, art, science To this end, I believe intelligent life might be evolution's secret weapon: the ultimate hack that might help us transcend entropy. ~ Jason Silva

To be intelligent, be complex; to be wise, be simple. ~ Debasish Mridha

And the state of his bathroom
I'm not one to gossip, but there are things crusted on his sink that have not simply developed intelligent life, but have in all probability by now envolved their own political systems. ~ Neil Gaiman

Their wine was probably the best I'd ever had, and I was quickly coming to the conclusion that the creation of alcohol was probably an instinctual trait throughout all intelligent life.

A silly concept, I know, but it had to be more than a coincidence that every world I'd ever been to had some form of alcoholic beverage. It was as if the first thing creatures did when they achieved a level of intelligence that no longer required them spending their entire lives scavenging for food or reproducing, was look for ways to get fucked up. ~ Terra Whiteman

You see, it is approximately three million years old. What you are now looking at is the first evidence of intelligent life beyond the Earth. ~ Anonymous

It isn't the Universe that's following our logic, it's we that are constructed in accordance with the logic of the Universe. And that gives what I might call a definition of intelligent life: something that reflects the basic structure of the Universe. ~ Fred Hoyle

Intelligence is something that is not just thinking, it's feeling. Ultimately, the highest reflection of intelligent life is cooperative life in which all benefit. ~ Frederick Lenz

My scratching I don't really think communicates to intelligent life forms. Anyone with more than one brain cell would think Kid Koala music is completely retarded. ~ Eric San

As the first human to land on any world outside the Earth, and probably the first living creature of any sort to come from the Earth and reach the Moon, his legacy will be safe as long as intelligent life survives in this corner of the cosmos. ~ Hugh Downs

Perhaps we've never been visited by aliens because they have looked upon Earth and decided there's no sign of intelligent life. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I know what cancer was. How is it like humankind?"

Sek Hardeen's perfectly modulated, softly accented tones showed a hint of agitation. "We have spread out through the galaxy like cancer cells through a living body, Duré. We multiply without thought to the countless life forms that must die or be pushed aside so that we may breed and flourish. We eradicate competing forms of intelligent life. ~ Dan Simmons

Did you know, in the entire universe, we are the only intelligent life forms thought to have a Miss Universe contest? ~ Lily Tomlin

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

The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us. ~ Bill Watterson

I looked at his face and saw the decisive thrust of the adolescent jaw. No intelligent life there. ~ Ilona Andrews

But aren't all great quests folly? El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth and the search for intelligent life in the cosmos
we know what's out there. It's what isn't that truly compels us. Technology may have shrunk the epic journey to a couple of short car rides and regional jet lags
four states and twelve hundred miles traversed in an afternoon
but true quests aren't measured in time or distance anyway, so much as in hope. There are only two good outcomes for a quest like this, the hope of the serendipitous savant
sail for Asia and stumble on America
and the hope of scarecrows and tin men: that you find out you had the thing you sought all along. ~ Jess Walter

Is there intelligent life on Earth? ~ Frank Drake

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 ~ William J. Clinton

Other intelligent life-forms will differ greatly in appearance - they may resemble the creature in E.T. or startle us with their beauty - but life itself is common, I'm certain. ~ Frank Drake

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

Perhaps, as some wit remarked, the best proof that there is Intelligent Life in Outer Space is the fact it hasn't come here. Well, it can't hide forever - one day we will overhear it. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

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. ~ P.D. James

If we ever established contact with intelligent life on another world, there would be barriers to communication. First, they would be many light years away, so signals would take many years to reach them: there would be no scope for quick repartee. There might be an IQ gap. ~ Martin Rees

... only in the few universes that are like ours would intelligent beings develop and ask the question: "Why is the universe the way we see it?" The answer is then simple: If it had been any different, we would not be here! ~ Stephen Hawking

Thar's only two possibilities: Thar is life out there in the universe which is smarter than we are, or we're the most intelligent life in the universe. Either way, it's a mighty sobering thought. (Porkypine) ~ Walt Kelly

I believe alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less so. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth. ~ Stephen Hawking

Well, Congress gave us a billion dollars to dig the hole, this gigantic hole. Bigger, much bigger than the hole in Geneva, Switzerland. Then they canceled the machine and gave us a second billion dollars to fill up the hole. Two billion dollars to dig a hole and fill it up. That is the wisdom of the United States Congress and it really makes you wonder: Is there intelligent life on the Earth? Certainly not in the United States Congress. ~ Michio Kaku

Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that it is not only more distant from time's beginning but nearer its end. ~ H.G.Wells

A society that destroys the environment that supports it, I would not consider to be intelligent life. It's like the cancer that ultimately kills itself by destroying the host it feeds on. ~ Frederick Lenz

My only hope is that every other alien civilization isn't doing exactly what we are doing because then everybody would be listening, nobody would be receiving, and we would collectively conclude that there is no other intelligent life in the universe. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The best proof of intelligent life in space is that it hasn't come here. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

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. ~ Gene Wolfe

I believe that there may be intelligent life on other planets. ~ Pat Buckley

As the sun sets, something in me rises! Do you think it could be my soul? I feel it's a big probability! ~ Jasleen Kaur Gumber

The surviving intelligent life form on Earth is not going to be carbon-based; it's going to be silicon-based. ~ Paul MacCready

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. ~ Bill Watterson

[In the Universe it may be that] Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth. ~ Stephen Hawking

The higher you go in many big companies, the thinner the oxygen; and the thinner the oxygen, the more difficult it is to support intelligent life. Thus, the middles and bottoms of organizations contain most of the intelligence, and intelligence is necessary to appreciate innovative products. ~ Guy Kawasaki

There seems to be at least one common denominator to all intelligent life: it was bipedal and bimannual. Four legs was the most practical number for any animal on any planet, and it seems that nature has nothing else to work with. When she decided to give intelligence to a species, she taught him to stand on his hind legs, freeing his forefeet to become tools of his intellect. And she usually taught him by making him use his hands to climb. As a Cophian biologist had said, Life first tries to climb a tree to get to the stars. When it fails, it comes down and invents the high-C drive. ~ Walter M. Miller Jr.

Although the universe itself isn't a conscious entity, it possesses the raw materials that, when properly set into motion, create consciousness. It has the ability to create intelligent life, which is capable of understanding the universe ... It can know itself indirectly ~ Arthur Byron Cover

While the Baroque rules of Chess could only have been created by humans, the rules of Go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play Go. ~ Emanuel Lasker

The most intelligent thing you can possibly do with your life is to grow. ~ Steve Pavlina

It must be a very dour and pessimistic astronomer indeed who seriously doubts that there must be countless numbers of intelligent civilizations scattered throughout the universe on other planets which are orbiting around other stars. An attitude which asserts that man is the only intelligent life form in the universe is intolerably arrogant today ... anyone who holds such an opinion today is, fortunately for those who like to see some progress in human conceptions, something of an intellectual freak equivalent to a believer in the Flat Earth Theory. ~ Robert K. G. Temple

Indeed, it is the nature of intelligent life to climb mountains. They all want to stand on ever higher ground to gaze ever farther into the distance. It is a drive completely divorced from the demands of survival. ~ Liu Cixin

There are 400 billion stars out there, just in our galaxy alone. If just one out of a million of those had planets, and just one in a million of those had life, and just one out of a million of those had intelligent life, there would be literally millions of civilizations out there. ~ Jodie Foster

I won't eat anything that has intelligent life, but I'd gladly eat a network executive or a politician. ~ Marty Feldman

The hardware and the software used in the Breakthrough project will be compatible with other telescopes around the world, so they too can search for intelligent life. ~ Yuri Milner

The universe had no choice but to create intelligent life so that there would be someone else that could simply laugh at how unbelievably, ridiculously and senselessly huge the universe is and how utterly insignificant the rest of us are. ~ Ian Strang

We are explorers. We are at present, as far as we know, the only explorers of the universe. For a long time we thought that ours was the only planet that could support life. Then we found others that could – a few. For still longer we thought we were unique – the only intelligent form of life – a single, freakish pinpoint of reason in a vast, adventitious cosmos – utterly lonely in the horrid wastes of space.… Again we discovered we were mistaken…

But intelligent life is rare… very rare indeed… the rarest thing in creation…

But the most precious…

For intelligent life is the only thing that gives meaning to the universe. It is a holy thing, to be fostered and treasured.

Without it nothing begins, nothing ends, there can be nothing through all eternity but the mindless babblings of chaos…

Therefore, the nurture of all intelligent forms is a sacred duty. Even the merest spark of reason must be fanned in the hope of a flame. Frustrated intelligence must have its bonds broken. Narrow-channelled intelligence must be given the power to widen out. High intelligence must be learned from. That is why I have stayed here. ~ John Wyndham

I wonder if, in fact, we have been observed by aliens and upon close examination of human conduct and human behavior they have concluded that there is no sign of intelligent life on Earth. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

We feel certain that the extraterrestrial message is a mathematical code of some kind. Probably a number code. Mathematics is the one language we might conceivably have in common with other forms of intelligent life in the universe. As I understand it, there is no reality more independent of our perception and more true to itself than mathematical reality. ~ Don DeLillo

Only when science and technology are used with human concern in a world in which all of the earth's resources are held as the common heritage of all of the earth's people can we truly say that there is intelligent life on Earth. ~ Jacque Fresco

I much prefer working with kids whose life could be completely upended by a reading of a book over a weekend. You give them a book to read - they go home and come back a changed person. And that is so much more interesting and exciting. ~ Russell Banks

If one's life is so unsatisfying that an unhealthy activity brings a shred of happiness, it is nigh impossible to give it up unless something that brings greater happiness can be enjoyed in its stead. (28) ~ Prem Prakash

Life is a game. Either you win or lose. Never allow the fear of losing prevent you from entering the game. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Individuals start to see themselves reflected in their work and to understand their full status as human beings through the object created, through the work accomplished. Work no longer entails surrendering a part of one's being in the form of labor power sold, which no longer belongs to the individual, but becomes an expression of oneself, a contribution to the common life in which one is reflected, the fulfillment of one's social duty. ~ Ernesto Che Guevara

Your mind is your bitch," he says. "The truth is you can teach it to do anything. You have to program your brain to your commands, not other people's. ~ Cyma Rizwaan Khan

TODAY your life is a blank canvas, it's up to you what to paint ~ Steven Aitchison

Fashion is a dangerous road to go down. Anybody who is going to have children later in life had best not be too fashionable because the photos will come back to haunt them. ~ Graydon Carter

Spirituality does not have to be serious. You are spirituality. Fun laughter heal you faster than anything. Introduce fun back into your life. ~ Anita Moorjani

That is the challenge Companion. To take what has happened to you and learn from it. Nothing is quite so destructive as pity, especially self-pity. No event in life is so terrible that one cannot rise above it.
~ Robin Hobb

The vision may be the destination but the journey began with a past which will stay connected whatever the sages may say against it - there is always a hyperlink. ~ Amit Abraham

Look, the job of life is to turn your negatives into positives ~ Michka Assayas

I felt more than ever the necessity of my mission. But I went home out of spirits, I hardly know why. I must work by myself all life long. ~ Elizabeth Blackwell

The Line makes itself felt,
thro' some Energy unknown, ever are we haunted by that Edge so precise, so near. In the Dark, one never knows. Of course I am seeking the Warrior Path, imagining myself as heroick Scout. We all feel it Looming, even when we're awake, out there ahead someplace, the way you come to feel a River or Creek ahead, before anything else,
sound, sky, vegetation,
may have announced it. Perhaps 'tis the very deep sub-audible Hum of its Traffic that we feel with an equally undiscover'd part of the Sensorium,
does it lie but over the next Ridge? the one after that? We have mileage Estimates from Rangers and Runners, yet for as long as its Distance from the Post Mark'd West remains unmeasur'd, nor is yet recorded as Fact, may it remain, a-shimmer, among the few final Pages of its Life as Fiction. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Humanity suffers because most of us are living in our prison of fixed, false beliefs and we don't want to get out of it. ~ Debasish Mridha

There is no force like success, and that is why the individual makes all effort to surround himself throughout life with the evidence of it; as of the individual, so should it be of the nation. ~ Marcus Garvey

Now when I was a teenager, I was angsty as any teenager was, but after 17 years of having a mother who was in and out of my life like a yo-yo and a father who was faceless, I was angry. ~ Jarrett J. Krosoczka

Mama, you know you raised me with no father figure. I wanna take this time to thank you, even though I'm doing life. ~ Wyclef Jean

It was about grace, she decides, something that has been missing from her own life ... She wants to be the kind of person who can bestow unearned kindness on another, replace bitterness with empathy, forgive only for the sake of forgiving. ~ Emily Giffin

Politicians are like dogs ... Their life expectancy is too short for a commitment to be bearable ~ Henry Kissinger

Suppose that pleasure and pain are so intertwined that whoever wants as much as possible of the one must also have as much as possible of the other – that whoever wants to know 'rejoicing to heaven' must be prepared for 'grieving onto death' as well? And such might be the case! At least so the Stoics believed, who were consistent when they sought as little pleasure as possible, that life might afford them as little pain as possible. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. ~ Edmund Hillary

Why sad over one thing when you have millions of other reasons to be happy about. ~ Lovely Goyal

Diamond, however, had not been out so late before in all his life, and things looked so strange about him! - just as if he had got into Fairyland, of which he knew quite as much as anybody;
for his mother had no money to buy books to set him wrong on the subject. ~ George MacDonald

All living things need an atmosphere around them, a secret circle of darkness. If this veil is taken from them, if people condemn a religion, an art, a genius to orbit like a star without an atmosphere, then we should no longer wonder about their rapid decay and the way they become hard and barren. That is the way it is now with all great things which never succeed without some delusion.

But every people, indeed every person, who wishes to become mature needs such an enveloping delusion, such a protecting and veiling cloud. But today people generally despise becoming mature, because they honour history more than living. Indeed, people exult over the fact that now 'science is beginning to rule over living'. It is possible that people will attain that goal but it is certain that a life so governed is not worth much, because it is much less living and it establishes a life for the future far less than does the previous life governed not by knowledge but by instinct and powerful illusory images. But, as stated, it is clearly not to be the era of fully developed and mature people, of harmonious personalities, but the era of common work which is as useful as possible. That, however, amounts only to the fact that people are to be trained for the purposes of the time, in order to get to work with their hands as promptly as possible. They are to labour in the factories of the universal utilities before they are mature, that is, so that they really no longer become mature, ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Why one man rather than another? It was odd. You find yourself involved with a fellow for life just because he was the one that you met when you were nineteen. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Anyone at any age is able to tell the story of his or her life with authority. ~ E.L. Doctorow

Cynically speaking, one could say that it is true to life to be cynical about it.
~ Paul Tillich

I think so much of my early life, even though I grew up White and middle class, I was completely shattered by the horrifically violent atmosphere I grew up in. I am a consequence of violence. That opened a door to many realities that I would not have experienced had I not survived what I did. ~ Eve Ensler

With every vial of success there is always a pinch of madness. ~ Gunther Bearklawth

Greatest risk in life is not to take any risk. ~ Debasish Mridha

When you treat every scene as a holy scene, your life will be holy. ~ Art Hochberg

You don't have to act strong when you are strong.
It is only those who are strong enough to risk being broken that are truly unbreakable. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn