I helped him willingly and most efficiently, the latter because I knew that if I did jobs cheerfully and badly I wouldn’t be asked too often. - Fred Hoyle

The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.

But only gradually have I learned that such ultimate successes are not what the present-day authorities in Britain really want. What really delights them is extreme tidiness combined with a façade of everyday competence. This of course is why Britain plunges further and further downhill with every passing year. The truth is the opposite: it is the ultimate success that really counts.

I do not believe that anything really worthwhile will come out of the exploration of the slag heap that constitutes the surface of the moon...Nobody should imagine that the enormous financial budget of NASA implies that astronomy is now well supported.