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.

Space is what stops everything from happening in the same place.

But he knew well enough that any man in the right circumstances could be dehumanised by panic.

It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.

The entire sweep of human history from the dark ages into the unknown future was considerably less important at the moment than the question of a certain girl and her feelings toward him.

As his body became more and more defenseless, so his means of offense became steadily more frightful.

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