But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.

You will find men like him in all of the world's religions. They know that we represent reason and science, and, however confident they may be in their beliefs, they fear that we will overthrow their gods. Not necessarily through any deliberate act, but in a subtler fashion. Science can destroy a religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistance of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.

You can't have it both ways. You can't have both free will and a benevolent higher power who protects you from yourself.

The best proof of intelligent life in space is that it hasn't come here.

The realisation that our small planet is only one of many worlds gives mankind the perspective it needs to realise sooner that our own world belongs to all its creatures.

I believe any malevolent supercivilisation would have rapidly self-destructed as we may be in the process of doing ourselves. If we do have contact, physical contact with aliens, I think it will be benign.

Good morning, doctors. I have taken the liberty of removing Windows 95 from my hard drive.