I sometimes wonder how we spent leisure time before satellite television and Internet came along…and then I realise that I have spent more than half of my life in the ‘dark ages’!

As his body became more and more defenseless, so his means of offense became steadily more frightful.

The West needs to relearn what the rest of the world has never forgotten - that there is nothing sinful in leisure as long as it does not degenerate into mere sloth.

But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.

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.

This is the first age that's ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.

When beauty is universal, it loses its power to move the heart, and only its absence can produce any emotional effect.