To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.

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.

The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it – aliens.

No matter what engineering field you’re in, you learn the same basic science and mathematics. And then maybe you learn a little bit about how to apply it.

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

The human race may be the only intelligent beings in the galaxy.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza’s God, it won’t love us in return.

The mere thought hadn’t even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.

I think it quite likely that we are the only civilization within several hundred light years; otherwise we would have heard radio waves.

If a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.

If I were again beginning my studies, I would follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics.

One cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem.

I am not enough of a mathematician to be able to judge either the well-foundedness or the limits of relativity in physics.

My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.

I’m aware that, whatever the circumstances, there will always be speculation about me.

We must say that there are as many squares as there are numbers.

Our constitution protects aliens, drunks and U.S. Senators.

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

In my school, the brightest boys did math and physics, the less bright did physics and chemistry, and the least bright did biology. I wanted to do math and physics, but my father made me do chemistry because he thought there would be no jobs for mathematicians.

Time destroys the speculation of men, but it confirms nature.

I do not love to be printed on every occasion, much less to be dunned and teased by foreigners about mathematical things or to be thought by our own people to be trifling away my time about them when I should be about the king’s business.

There were plenty of other hominids, but they disappeared, probably because humans exterminated them, but nobody knows for sure.

It’s hard to speculate what tomorrow may bring.

Infinites, when considered absolutely without any restriction or limitation, are neither equal nor unequal, nor have any certain proportion one to another, and therefore, the principle that all infinites are equal is a precarious one.

It is generally recognised that women are better than men at languages, personal relations and multi-tasking, but less good at map-reading and spatial awareness. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that women might be less good at mathematics and physics.

Evolution has ensured that our brains just aren’t equipped to visualise 11 dimensions directly. However, from a purely mathematical point of view it’s just as easy to think in 11 dimensions, as it is to think in three or four.

Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.

The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you’ll live 10 times longer than if you have 10. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever. It’s truly ridiculous.

Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

The formula ‚Two and two make five‘ is not without its attractions.

If there’s a pregnancy rumor, people will find out it’s not true when you wind up not being pregnant, like nine months from now, and if there’s a house rumor, they’ll find out it’s not true when you are actively not ever spotted at that house.

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

I have just got a new theory of eternity.

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

To hold an idea and convince ourselves we arrived at it rationally, we go in search of evidence to support our view.

It’s time to commit to finding the answer, to search for life beyond Earth. Mankind has a deep need to explore, to learn, to know. We also happen to be sociable creatures. It is important for us to know if we are alone in the dark.

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

While physics and mathematics may tell us how the universe began, they are not much use in predicting human behavior because there are far too many equations to solve. I’m no better than anyone else at understanding what makes people tick, particularly women.

In the beginning of the year 1665, I found the method of approximating series and the rule for reducing any dignity of any binomial into such a series.

My speculation is that the U.S. does not want to establish the principle that it has to defer to some higher authority before carrying out the use of violence.

When I was about thirteen, the library was going to get ‚Calculus for the Practical Man.‘ By this time I knew, from reading the encyclopedia, that calculus was an important and interesting subject, and I ought to learn it.

If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilisations, and I mean strange in a bad way. And it could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilisations.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

Some formulas are too complex and I don’t want anything to do with them.

In the past, there was active discrimination against women in science. That has now gone, and although there are residual effects, these are not enough to account for the small numbers of women, particularly in mathematics and physics.

It’s important that we attempt to extend life beyond Earth now. It is the first time in the four billion-year history of Earth that it’s been possible, and that window could be open for a long time – hopefully it is – or it could be open for a short time. We should err on the side of caution and do something now.

For the execution of the voyage to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps.

I’ve… been accused of being involved with every man I’m ever seen with or worked with. Maybe I have, maybe I ain’t. I never tell if I have.

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

This is pure speculation, but for a period of time, a lot of getting into a party was through fundraising and volunteer work, and Republican women had more time to do that than democratic women, who were out there getting jobs.

Nature hates calculators.

The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.

That the divided but contiguous particles of bodies may be separated from one another is a matter of observation; and, in the particles that remain undivided, our minds are able to distinguish yet lesser parts, as is mathematically demonstrated.

If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.

In terms of mathematics textbooks, why can’t you have the scale of a national market? Right now, we have a Texas textbook that’s different from a California textbook that’s different from a Massachusetts textbook. That’s very expensive.