If man survives for as long as the least successful of the dinosaurs-those creatures whom we often deride as nature's failures-then we may be certain of this: for all but a vanishingly brief instant near the dawn of history, the word 'ship' will mean- 'spaceship.'

Good morning, doctors. I have taken the liberty of removing Windows 95 from my hard drive.

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.

In fact, one of the arguments for searching for intelligent life in space, elsewhere, is that we have no evidence that intelligence has any survival value. The most successful creatures on this planet are the cockroaches. They've been around, what is it, 100 million years or so and I suspect they'll still be there 100 million years in the future. Maybe intelligence is an evolutionary aberration which dooms its possessors in the way armor may have doomed some of the dinosaurs.

Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests.

Open the pod bay doors, Hal.

The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be.