“The best proof that there’s intelligent life in outer space is the fact that it hasn’t come here.”
Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host
Disputed
Is There Meaning to Life? Jordan Peterson, Rebecca Goldstein, William Lane Craig, Debate at Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto
26 January 2018
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDDQOCXBrAw (9:07 into video)
“The best proof that there’s intelligent life in outer space is the fact that it hasn’t come here.”
Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host
Disputed
Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)
Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 307
Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian
The Mind (begun in September 1723; not completed).
John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America
1962, Rice University speech
Context: There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again.
Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist
Source: Man in Evolution (1941), Chapter 1
“The author discusses valueless measures in pointless spaces.”
Paul R. Halmos (1916–2006) American mathematician
Proposal for a humorous first sentence to a review of a mathematical paper, rejected by editors.
I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography (1985)