There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence—or even in life. Both may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly's wings. The insect would fly just as well without them.

A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.

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

One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of the mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

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.

A man who grows that much hair,' critics were fond of saying, 'must have a lot to hide.

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