Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of god a pretty good definition of insanity?

Moses Kaldor had always loved mountains; they made him feel nearer to the God whose nonexistence he still sometimes resented.

It is really quite amazing by what margins competent but conservative scientists and engineers can miss the mark, when they start with the preconceived idea that what they are investigating is impossible.

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

Getting information from the internet is like getting a glass of water from the Niagara Falls.

There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence—or even in life. Both may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly's wings. The insect would fly just as well without them.

Science fiction does not attempt to predict. It extrapolates. It just says, "What if?" not what will be? Because you can never predict what will happen, particularly in politics and economics. You can to some extent predict in the technological sphere - flying, space travel, but even there we missed badly on some things, like computers. No one imagined the incredible impact of computers, even though robot brains of various kinds but the idea that one day every house would have a computer in every room and that one day we'd have computers built into our clothing, nobody ever thought of that.