Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral.

I am an optimist. Anyone interested in the future has to be otherwise he would simply shoot himself.

The truth, as always, will be far stranger.

And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.

Even by the twenty-second century, no way had yet been discovered of keeping elderly and conservative scientists from occupying crucial administrative positions. Indeed, it was doubted if the problem ever would be solved.

We stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return...

Death focuses the mind on the things that really matter: why are we here, and what should we do?