The moon is the first milestone on the road to the stars.

In fact, one of the arguments for searching for intelligent life in space, elsewhere, is that we have no evidence that intelligence has any survival value. The most successful creatures on this planet are the cockroaches. They've been around, what is it, 100 million years or so and I suspect they'll still be there 100 million years in the future. Maybe intelligence is an evolutionary aberration which dooms its possessors in the way armor may have doomed some of the dinosaurs.

I doubt if there is a single field of study so theoretical, so remote from what is laughingly called everyday life, that it may not one day produce something that will shake the world.

In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer. [dedication to Isaac Asimov from Arthur C. Clarke in his book Report on Planet Three]

I'm surprised at some technological development, and the realization that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I think the CD-ROM is the best example of that. The idea of having a whole symphony, or opera, or novel in a little piece of plastic is pretty amazing.

Creationism, perhaps the most pernicious of the intellectual perversions now afflicting the American public.

The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That's why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.