"Some people say I have a chip on my shoulder but it is actually my chin."

"I believe aliens are out there. But they don't want to meet us."

"I think [contacting an alien civilization] would be a disaster. The extraterrestrials would probably be far in advance of us. The history of advanced races meeting more primitive people on this planet…"

"I want to know why the universe exists, why there is something rather than nothing."

"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."