To be a science fiction writer you must be interested in the future and you must feel that the future will be different and hopefully better than the present. Although I know that most - that many science fiction writings have been anti-utopias. And the reason for that is that it's much easier and more exciting to write about a really nasty future than a - placid, peaceful one.

I doubt if there is a single field of study so theoretical, so remote from what is laughingly called everyday life, that it may not one day produce something that will shake the world.

We always thought the living Earth was a thing of beauty. It isn’t. Life has had to learn to defend itself against the planet’s random geological savagery.

Astronomy, as nothing else can do, teaches men humility.

It was a pity that there was no radar to guide one across the trackless seas of life. Every man had to find his own way, steered by some secret compass of the soul. And sometimes, late or early, the compass lost its power and spun aimlessly on its bearings. Alan Bishop

Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

In this single galaxy of ours there are eighty-seven thousand million suns. [...] In challenging it, you would be like ants attempting to label and classify all the grains of sand in all the deserts of the world. [...] It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man.