Contact quotes

View Quote Young Ellie Arroway: Dad, do you think there's people on other planets?
Ted Arroway: I don't know, Sparks. But I guess I'd say if it is just us... seems like an awful waste of space.

View Quote [asked what her one question to an alien race would be]
Ellie Arroway: How did you do it? How did you evolve, how did you survive this technological adolescence without destroying yourself?

View Quote [Ellie challenges Palmer to prove the existence of God]
Palmer Joss: Did you love your father?
Ellie Arroway: What?
Palmer Joss: Your dad. Did you love him?
Ellie Arroway: Yes, very much.
Palmer Joss: Prove it.

View Quote [Ellie Arroway sees a suspicious man inside the walkway leading to the transport machine, then turns a security camera with a joystick so it faces him.]
Ellie Arroway: We've got a security problem here!
Security official: Are you sure?
Ellie Arroway: Yeah. That man? [points to suspicious man on-screen] I know him! He's not supposed to be there!
[Ellie Arroway puts on a headset with a microphone attached to it.]
Ellie Arroway: [speaking to a technician] Get me Drumlin on a secure loop please.
Ellie Arroway: [speaking to David Drumlin] David, can you hear me?
David Drumlin: Yeah, I hear.
Ellie Arroway: We have a security breach.

View Quote [On why the message does not foreshadow an alien attack] We pose no threat to them. It would be like us going out of our way to destroy a few microbes on an ant hill in Africa.

View Quote [Young Ellie on a ham radio following her father's death] CQ... CQ... this is W9GFO, come back? Dad, do you read me?

View Quote As a man of faith, I am bound by a different covenant than Dr. Arroway. But our goal is one and the same: the pursuit of truth. I for one believe her.

View Quote First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?

View Quote I'm not against technology, doctor. I'm against the men who deify it at the expense of human truth.

View Quote I've had a long time to make enemies, doctor. So many governments, business interests, even religious leaders that would like to see me depart this Earth. I'll grant them their wish soon enough. But before I do, I wish to make a small contribution. A final gesture of good will to the people of this little planet who have given—from whom I have taken—so much.

View Quote I... had an experience. I can't prove it, I can't even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real. I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever. A vision of the universe, that tells us undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how... rare, and precious we all are! A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater then ourselves, that we are not, that none of us are alone.

View Quote Ironically the thing that people are most hungry for, meaning, is the one thing that science hasn't been able to give them.

View Quote Mathematics is the only true universal language.

View Quote Ok to go... Ok to go

View Quote So what's more likely? That an all-powerful, mysterious God created the Universe, and decided not to give any proof of his existence? Or, that He simply doesn't exist at all, and that we created Him, so that we wouldn't have to feel so small and alone?