A permanent base on Mars would have a number of advantages beyond being a bonanza for planetary science and geology. If, as some evidence suggests, exotic micro-organisms have arisen independently of terrestrial life, studying them could revolutionise biology, medicine and biotechnology. – Paul Davies

Traditionally, scientists have treated the laws of physics as simply given, elegant mathematical relationships that were somehow imprinted on the universe at its birth, and fixed thereafter. Inquiry into the origin and nature of the laws was not regarded as a proper part of science. – Paul Davies

Cosmologists have attempted to account for the day-to-day laws you find in textbooks in terms of fundamental superlaws, but the superlaws themselves must still be accepted as brute facts. So maybe the ultimate laws of nature will always be off-limits to science. – Paul Davies