Top 74 Paul Davies Quotes

#1. Ultimate questions will always lie beyond the scope of empirical science as it is.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #56575
#2. When I was a student almost nobody thought there was any life beyond Earth. Today it's fashionable to say that there is life all over the place, that the universe is teeming with it, but the scientific facts on the ground haven't really changed.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #62932
#3. The Eerie Silence: are we alone in the universe?

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #180219
#4. It's only fashion that has said the pendulum has swung from extreme skepticism about extraterrestrial life to extreme credulity. The truth is somewhere in between.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #196229
#5. For me, science is already fantastical enough. Unlocking the secrets of nature with fundamental physics or cosmology or astrobiology leads you into a wonderland compared with which beliefs in things like alien abductions pale into insignificance.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #212883
#6. To a physicist life looks nothing short of a miracle. It's just amazing what living things can do.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #218860
#7. It may seem bizarre, but in my opinion science offers a surer path to God than religion.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #239627
#8. Most life on Earth is microbes. we've only just scratched the surface of the microbial realm. Probably less than .1% of microbes have been classified let alone cultured or had their genes sequenced, so really that microbial realm is a mystery.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #265994
#9. In the frantic search for an elusive 'cure,' few researchers stand back and ask a very basic question: why does cancer exist? What is its place in the grand story of life?

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #295667
#10. To expect alien technology to be just a few decades ahead of ours is too incredible to be taken seriously.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #334447
#11. The Universe is not a collection of objects, but is an inseparable web of vibrating energy patterns in which no one component has reality independently from the entirety. Included in the entirety is the observer.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #390463
#12. My feeling is that scientific method has the power to account for and interlink all phenomena in the universe, including its origin, using the laws of nature. But that still leaves the laws unexplained.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #417436
#13. The laws of physics ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design ... The universe must have a purpose.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #458348
#14. By some accounts, humans are dwarfed and shown to be trivial on the cosmic scale. By some accounts, humans are reduced and shown to be nothing but electronic molecules in motion on the atomic scale. But by equally impressive accounts, humans live at the center of complexity.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #470283
#15. Science, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term 'doubting Thomas' well illustrates the difference.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #484375
#16. Science is about explaining the world, and religion is about interpreting it. There shouldn't be any conflict.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #497305
#17. Cosmologists have attempted to account for the day-to-day laws you find in textbooks in terms of fundamental 'superlaws,' but the superlaws themselves must still be accepted as brute facts. So maybe the ultimate laws of nature will always be off-limits to science.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #499303
#18. If we do discover more than one type of life on Earth, we can be fairly certain that the universe is teeming with it, for it would be inconceivable that life started twice here but never on all the other earth-like planets.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #531209
#19. The origin of life is one of the great outstanding mysteries of science.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #539651
#20. We will never fully explain the world by appealing to something outside it that must simply be accepted on faith, be it an unexplained God or an unexplained set of mathematical laws.

Paul Davies

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#21. The secret of life does not lie in its chemical basis ... Life succeeds precisely because it evades chemical imperatives.

Paul Davies

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#22. It is possible that a scientific discovery will be made that humans will later regret because it has awful consequences. The problem is, we probably would not know in advance and, once the discovery is made, it cannot be undiscovered.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #558497
#23. Technology is, in the broadest sense, mind or intelligence or purpose blending with nature.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #591205
#24. There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all ... It seems as though somebody has fine tuned nature's numbers to make the Universe ... The impression of design is overwhelming.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #608558
#25. A permanent base on Mars would have a number of advantages beyond being a bonanza for planetary science and geology. If, as some evidence suggests, exotic micro-organisms have arisen independently of terrestrial life, studying them could revolutionise biology, medicine and biotechnology.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #611934
#26. Searching for alternative life on Earth might seem misconceived, because there is excellent evidence that every kind of life so far studied evolved from a common ancestor that lived billions of years ago. Yet most of the life that exists on Earth has never been properly classified.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #692641
#27. In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #694600
#28. The vast majority of terrestrial species are in fact microbes, and scientists have only begun scratching the surface of the microbial realm. It is entirely possible that examples of life as we don't know it have so far been overlooked.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #717978
#29. Scientists have no agreed theory of the origin of life - plenty of scenarios, conjectures and just-so stories, but nothing with solid experimental support.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #740544
#30. In the 1990s I began to study the prospects that life could spread from Mars to Earth or maybe Earth to Mars and that maybe life began on Mars and came to Earth, and that idea seemed to have a lot of traction and is now accepted as very plausible.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #744369
#31. Mathematics is universal. It's discovered by human beings, but the rules of mathematics are the same throughout the universe and the laws of the universe.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #775880
#32. No planet is more earth-like than Earth itself, so if life really does pop up readily in earth-like conditions, then surely it should have arisen many times right here on our home planet? And how do we know it didn't? The truth is, nobody has looked.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #780257
#33. Very, very slowly, the dwarf remnants of what was once our mighty sun will cool and dim, until it embarks on its final metamorphosis, gradually solidifying into a crystal of extraordinary rigidity. Eventually it will fade out completely, merging quietly into the blackness of space.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #793054
#34. Traditionally, scientists have treated the laws of physics as simply 'given,' elegant mathematical relationships that were somehow imprinted on the universe at its birth, and fixed thereafter. Inquiry into the origin and nature of the laws was not regarded as a proper part of science.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #817158
#35. For millennia mankind has believed that nothing can come out of nothing. Today we can argue that everything has come out of nothing. Nobody has to pay for the universe. It is the ultimate free lunch.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #828038
#36. Astronauts have been stuck in low-Earth orbit, boldly going nowhere. American attempts to kick-start a new phase of lunar exploration have stalled amid the realisation that NASA's budget is too small for the job.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #833024
#37. When I was a student, the laws of physics were regarded as completely off limits. The job of the scientist, we were told, is to discover the laws and apply them, not inquire into their provenance.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #866268
#38. The secret of our success on planet Earth is space. Lots of it. Our solar system is a tiny island of activity in an ocean of emptiness.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #915163
#39. Is there anything science should not try to explain? Science is knowledge and knowledge is power - power to do good or evil. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #917547
#40. Cancer is like another form of life. It's closely related to healthy life. A healthy body is one form of life. Cancer is in a way nature's experiment with life.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #954831
#41. The way life manages information involves a logical structure that differs fundamentally from mere complex chemistry. Therefore chemistry alone will not explain life's origin, any more than a study of silicon, copper and plastic will explain how a computer can execute a program.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #965516
#42. Many billions of years will elapse before the smallest, youngest stars complete their nuclear burning and shrink into white dwarfs. But with slow, agonizing finality perpetual night will surely fall.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #967659
#43. Things changed with the discovery of neutron stars and black holes - objects with gravitational fields so intense that dramatic space and time-warping effects occur.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #990912
#44. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1064666
#45. Perhaps the best motivation for going to Mars is political. It is obvious that no single nation currently has either the will or the resources to do it alone, but a consortium of nations and space agencies could achieve it within 20 years.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1082010
#46. If we're looking for intelligence in the universe I think everybody assumes that this has to start with life and so the question is: "How likely is it that there will be life elsewhere in the universe?"

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1135369
#47. Most research into life's murky origin has been carried out by chemists. They've tried a variety of approaches in their attempts to recreate the first steps on the road to life, but little progress has been made. Perhaps that is no surprise, given life's stupendous complexity.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1153404
#48. Although the elusive 'cure' may be a distant dream, understanding the true nature of cancer will enable it to be better controlled and less menacing.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1208183
#49. Cancer is such a ruthless adversary because it behaves as if it has its own fiendishly cunning agenda.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1237565
#50. A universe that came from nothing in the big bang will disappear into nothing at the big crunch. Its glorious few zillion years of existence not even a memory.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1279991
#51. Cancer touches every family in one way or another. As other diseases are brought under control, cancer is set to become the number one killer, and is already in epidemic proportions worldwide.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1306746
#52. A really big question is why the universe is fit for life; it looks like it has been 'fixed up'.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1307363
#53. The universe contains vastly more order than Earth-life could ever demand. All those distant galaxies, irrelevant for our existence, seem as equally well ordered as our own.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1321068
#54. The Goldilocks Enigma is the idea that everything in the universe is just right for life, like the porridge in the fairy tale.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1331133
#55. It will be in the convergence of evolutionary biology, developmental biology and cancer biology that the answer to cancer will lie. Nor will this confluence be a one-way street.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1341206
#56. Why is nature so ingeniously, one might even say suspiciously, friendly to life?
What do the laws of physics care about life and consciousness that they should
conspire to make a hospitable universe? It's almost as if a Grand Designer had it
all figured out.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1355988
#57. "Are we alone in the universe?" This is a question which goes back to the dawn of history, but for most of human history it has been in the province of religion and philosophy. Fifty or something years ago, however, it became part of science.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1432848
#58. Mathematics is not something that you find lying around in your back yard. It's produced by the human mind. Yet if we ask where mathematics works best, it is in areas like particle physics and astrophysics, areas of fundamental science that are very, very far removed from everyday affairs.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1499510
#59. General relativity is the cornerstone of cosmology and astrophysics. It has also provided the conceptual basis for string theory and other attempts to unify all the forces of nature in terms of geometrical structures.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1515153
#60. Should we find a second form of life right here on our doorstep, we could be confident that life is a truly cosmic phenomenon. If so, there may well be sentient beings somewhere in the galaxy wondering, as do we, if they are not alone in the universe.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1523449
#61. The birth of science as we know it arguably began with Isaac Newton's formulation of the laws of gravitation and motion. It is no exaggeration to say that physics was reborn in the early 20th-century with the twin revolutions of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1536825
#62. Can a truly absurd universe so convincingly mimic a meaningful one?

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1543105
#63. The question not many ask is: why are the laws of physics like they are?

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1581355
#64. One of the confusions surrounding the Intelligent Design movement's propaganda is a failure to distinguish between the fact of evolution and the mechanism of evolution.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1593533
#65. The thing about lucid dreams is that it's not like the real world where you are constrained by all sorts of things, including the laws of physics-you can do magic.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1616181
#66. Man-made computers are limited in their performance by finite processing speed and memory. So, too, the cosmic computer is limited in power by its age and the finite speed of light.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1662431
#67. The language of chemistry simply does not mesh with that of biology. Chemistry is about substances and how they react, whereas biology appeals to concepts such as information and organisation. Informational narratives permeate biology.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1664160
#68. Even if we don't have a precise idea of exactly what took place at the beginning, we can at least see that the origin of the universe from nothing need not be unlawful or unnatural or unscientific.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1683411
#69. The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is "something behind it all" is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1732892
#70. Astonishingly, in spite of decades of research, there is no agreed theory of cancer, no explanation for why, inside almost all healthy cells, there lurks a highly efficient cancer subroutine that can be activated by a variety of agents - radiation, chemicals, inflammation and infection.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1733364
#71. The anthropic principle is an unfortunate name as it implies something about humanity.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1785468
#72. Many investigators feel uneasy stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they admit they are baffled.

Paul Davies

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#73. Imagine a civilisation that's way in advance of us wants to communicate with us, and assist us in our development. The information we provide to them must reflect our highest aspirations and ideals, and not just be some crazy person's bizarre politics or religion.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1822154
#74. Clearly, some creative thinking is badly needed if humans are to have a future beyond Earth. Returning to the Moon may be worthy and attainable, but it fails to capture the public's imagination. What does get people excited is the prospect of a mission to Mars.

Paul Davies

Paul Davies Quotes #1824052

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