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.

They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of omnipotence; their experiments did not always succeed.

If I didn't exist, I would have invented myself.

What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.

Perhaps, as some wit remarked, the best proof that there is Intelligent Life in Outer Space is the fact it hasn't come here. Well, it can't hide forever - one day we will overhear it.

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses.