Perhaps the safest thing to do at the outset, if technology permits, is to send music. This language may be the best we have for explaining what we are like to others in space, with least ambiguity. I would vote for Bach, all of Bach, streamed out into space, over and over again. We would be bragging of course, but surely it is excusable for us to put the best possible face on at the beginning of such an acquaintance. We can tell the harder truths later.
Lewis Thomas (1913-1993) American physician, poet, essayist, researcher
“Ceti,” New England Journal of Medicine (10 Feb 1972)
(Source)
On sending messages to extraterrestrial civilizations on other worlds, e.g. Tau Ceti. Citation N Engl J Med 1972; 286:306-307. Reprinted in The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974).
Quotations about:
Bach
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Bach almost persuades me to be a Christian.
Roger Fry (1866-1934) English artist and art critic
(Attributed)
Quoted in Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry, ch. 11 (1940).
