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

One can imagine a time when men who still inhabit organic bodies are regarded with pity by those who have passed on to an infinitely richer mode of existence, capable of throwing their consciousness or sphere of attention instantaneously to any point on land, sea, or sky where there is a suitable sensing organ. In adolescence we leave childhood behind; one day there may be a second and more portentous adolescence, when we bid farewell to the flesh.

Can the synthesis of man and machine ever be stable, or will the purely organic component become such a hindrance that it has to be discarded?

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.

You don't believe in organized religion, yet a major theme in so many of your works seems to be a quest for God.

There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded.

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: 1- It's completely impossible. 2- It's possible, but it's not worth doing. 3- I said it was a good idea all along.