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

Many, and some of the most pressing, of our terrestrial problems can be solved only by going into space. Long before it was a vanishing commodity, the wilderness as the preservation of the world was proclaimed by Thoreau. In the new wilderness of the Solar System may lie the future preservation of mankind.

We stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return... The coming of the rocket brought to an end a million years of isolation... the childhood of our race was over and history as we know it began.

Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

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

In this single galaxy of ours there are eighty-seven thousand million suns. [...] In challenging it, you would be like ants attempting to label and classify all the grains of sand in all the deserts of the world. [...] It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man.

As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.