"We're just beginning SETI. You know how many possibilities there are. This is the time to leave every option open. This is the time to be optimistic. If we lived in any previous time in human history, we could wonder about this all our lives, and we couldn't do a thing to find the answer. But this time is unique. This is the first time when anybody's been able to look for extraterrestrial intelligence. You've made the detector to look for civilizations on the planets of millions of other stars. Nobody's guaranteeing success. But can you think of a more important question? Imagine them out there sending us signals, and nobody on Earth is listening. That would be a joke, a travesty. Wouldn't you be ashamed of your civilization if we were able to listen and didn't have the gumption to do it?"

"If we fail, we learn something of the rarity of intelligent life--or at least intelligent life that thinks like we do and wants to communicate with backward civilizations like us. And if we succeed, we hit the cosmic jackpot. There's no greater discovery you can imagine."

"This is the first moment in human history when it's possible to search for the inhabitants of other worlds. If we fail, we've calibrated something of the rarity and preciousness of life on our planet--a fact, if it is one, very much worth knowing. And if we succeed, we'll have changed the history of our species, broken the shackles of provincialism."