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

The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars... A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.

A hundred years ago, the electric telegraph made possible-indeed, inevitable-the United States of America. The communications satellite will make equally inevitable a United Nations of Earth; let us hope that the transition period will not be equally bloody.

Now times had changed, and the inherited wisdom of the past had become folly.

Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference we should each be treated with appropriate respect.

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.

Finally, I would like to assure my many Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim friends that I am sincerely happy that the religion which Chance has given you has contributed to your peace of mind (and often, as Western medical science now reluctantly admits, to your physical well-being). Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is the best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future.