The Universe Doesn't Allow Perfection.

If We Can Avoid Disaster For The Next Two Centuries, Our Species Should Be Safe As We Spread Into Space. If We Are The Only Intellegent Beings In The Galaxy We Should Make Sure We Survive And Continue. . . . Our Only Chance Of Long-term Survival Is Not To Remain Inward Looking On Planet Earth But To Spread Out Into Space. We Have Made Remarkable Progress In The Last Hundred Years. But If We Want To Continue Beyond The Next Hundred Years, Our Future Is In Space.

I Think The Next [21st] Century Will Be The Century Of Complexity. We Have Already Discovered The Basic Laws That Govern Matter And Understand All The Normal Situations. We Don't Know How The Laws Fit Together, And What Happens Under Extreme Conditions. But I Expect We Will Find A Complete Unified Theory Sometime This Century. The Is No Limit To The Complexity That We Can Build Using Those Basic Laws.

The "powers That Be" Are Not Smart Enough To Engineer Armageddon, But They May Yet Be Stupid Enough. If Governments Are Involved In Covering Up The Knowledge Of Aliens, Then They Are Doing A Much Better Job Of It Than They Seem To Do At Anything Else.

There Are No Black Holes - In The Sense Of Regimes From Which Light Can't Escape To Infinity. There Are However Apparent Horizons Which Persist For A Period Of Time.

Most Sets Of Values Would Give Rise To Universes That, Although They Might Be Very Beautiful, Would Contain No One Able To Wonder At That Beauty.