The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars... A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.

Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.

Guns are the crutches of the impotent.

If such a thing had happened once, it must surely have happened many times in this galaxy of a hundred billion suns.

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.

Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.

'The Devil in the Dark' impressed me because it presented the idea, unusual in science fiction then and now, that something weird, and even dangerous, need not be malevolent. That is a lesson that many of today's politicians have yet to learn.