Astronomy, as nothing else can do, teaches men humility.

Science fiction does not attempt to predict. It extrapolates. It just says, "What if?" not what will be? Because you can never predict what will happen, particularly in politics and economics. You can to some extent predict in the technological sphere - flying, space travel, but even there we missed badly on some things, like computers. No one imagined the incredible impact of computers, even though robot brains of various kinds but the idea that one day every house would have a computer in every room and that one day we'd have computers built into our clothing, nobody ever thought of that.

But he knew well enough that any man in the right circumstances could be dehumanised by panic.

I'm quite fond of the writer who told a beginning author, "If you've got a message, use Western Union."

It was one thing to have guessed it, another to have had that guess confirmed beyond possibility of refutation.

I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her.

'The Devil in the Dark' impressed me because it presented the idea, unusual in science fiction then and now, that something weird, and even dangerous, need not be malevolent. That is a lesson that many of today's politicians have yet to learn.