Martin Rees Quotes

In future, children won't perceive the stars as mere twinkling points of light: they'll learn that each is a 'Sun', orbited by planets fully as interesting as those in our Solar system.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

It will not be humans who watch the sun's demise, six billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.

I think a few hundred years from now we'll start having the 'posthuman' era of different species.

It's better to read first rate science fiction than second rate science-it's a lot more fun, and no more likely to be wrong.

We need to broaden our sympathies both in space and time - and perceive ourselves as part of a long heritage, and stewards for an immense future.

I hope that by 2050 the entire solar system will have been explored and mapped by flotillas of tiny robotic craft.

Science is a part of culture. Indeed, it is the only truly global culture because protons and proteins are the same all over the world, and it's the one culture we can all share.

I'm not myself religious but have no wish to insult or denigrate those who are.

I think all countries need to aim to cut the CO2 emissions per person, taking account of externalities like imports and exports.

Crucial to science education is hands-on involvement: showing, not just telling; real experiments and field trips and not just "virtual reality".

The 'clean energy' challenge deserves a commitment akin to the Manhattan project or the Apollo moon landing.

An insect is more complex than a star..and is a far greater challenge to understand.

The carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is measured. It's uncontroversial. It's going up. We know that has a tendency to warm the atmosphere and we should be worried about that.

To ensure continuing prosperity in the global economy, nothing is more important than the development and application of knowledge and skills.

Collective human actions are transforming, even ravaging, the biosphere - perhaps irreversibly - through global warming and loss of biodiversity.

The extreme sophistication of modern technology - wonderful though its benefits are - is, ironically, an impediment to engaging young people with basics: with learning how things work.

Some claim that computers will, by 2050, achieve human capabilities. Of course, in some respects they already have.

Experiments that crash atoms together could start a chain reaction that erodes everything on Earth.

Science isn't just for scientists - it's not just a training for careers.

The universe is still a place of mystery and wonder.

The politics is far harder than the science. And even if we accept the science we have a big issue of how to deal with it.

Nuclear weapons can be dismantled, but they cannot be uninvented.

All space projects push the frontiers of technology and are drivers of innovation.

The U.S., France, Germany and Canada have all responded to the financial crisis by boosting rather than cutting their science funding. The U.K. has not.

The scientists who attack mainstream religion, rather than striving for peaceful coexistence with it, damage science, and also weaken the fight against fundamentalism.

Given the scale of issues like global warming and epidemic disease, we shouldn't underestimate the importance of a can-do attitude to science rather than a can't-afford-it attitude.