Any technology that does not appear magical is insufficiently advanced.

The last 150 years have amounted to such a cavalcade of wonders and technological marvels that we’ve literally programmed ourselves to expect it will continue indefinitely. This sequence of events — the telephone, the light bulb, electricity in every home, airplanes, motion pictures, television, the computer, and thousands of other conveniences to human life—programmed us to think there’s an endless supply of technological magic that can overcome anything. I think we’re heading into a time-out from technological progress as we’ve known it—and by that, I mean just the way I’ve described it, the expectation of endless magic. And I think that will come as an enormous shock to our culture.

If we ever talk to aliens, their civilisation will be far more advanced than ours (because of distances involved). They won't be religious!

This would be depressing but for one crucial fact: humans are distinguished from other species by our ability to work miracles. We call these miracles technology.

There's something that remains barbarous in educated people, and lately I've more and more had the feeling that we are nonwondering primitives. And why is it that we no longer marvel at these technological miracles? They've become the external facts of every life. We've all been to the university, we've had introductory courses in everything, and therefore we have persuaded ourselves that if we had the time to apply ourselves to these scientific marvels, we would understand them. But of course that's an illusion. It couldn't happen. Even among people who have had careers in science. They know no more about how it all works than we do. So we are in the position of savage men who, however, have been educated into believing that they are capable of understanding everything. Not that we actually do understand, but that we have the capacity.

We are like creatures so dazzled with our own technological prowess that we no longer think it necessary to consider the obvious.

We’ve moved beyond our ability to understand our technology.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

At the heart of the matter... our technologies have become more powerful than our theories... We can do with technology what we cannot do with science.

We have already discovered two species that are very intelligent but technically less advanced than us — the common chimpanzee and pygmy chimpanzee. Has our response been to sit down and try to communicate with them? Of course not. Instead we shoot them, stuff them, dissect them, cut off their hands for trophies, put them on exhibit in cages, inject them with AIDS virus as a medical experiment, and destroy or take over their habitat. That response was predictable, because human explorers who discovered technically less advanced humans also regularly responded by shooting them, decimating their populations with new diseases, and destroying or taking over their habitat. Any advanced extraterrestrials who discovered us would surely treat us in the same way...If there really are any radio civilizations within listening distance of us, then for heaven's sake let's turn off our own transmitters and try to escape detection, or we are doomed.

Those people overseas didn't go to Ivy League schools... Well, we're so sophisticated, we think we've got everything figured out. We know about evolution, we know about Darwin, we know about all these things that says God isn't real, we know about all this stuff. And if we've been in many schools, in the most advanced schools, we have been inundated with skepticism and secularism. And, uh, overseas they're simple, humble. You tell 'em God loves 'em and they say, "Okay, he loves me". You say God will do miracles and they say, "Okay, we believe him". That's what God's looking for, that's why they have miracles.

Statistically likely that there are more advanced alien civilizations out there. Hopefully they're good environmentalists and find us cute.

You know what Arthur C. Clarke said about technology and magic, right? Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Turn it around. What is advanced magic indistinguishable from? Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from the miraculous.

Our technology forces us to live mythically