There is the possibility that humankind can outgrow its infantile tendencies, as I suggested in 'Childhood's End.' But it is amazing how childishly gullible humans are.

A precondition for being a science fiction writer other than an interest in the future is that, an interest - at least an understanding of science, not necessarily a science degree but you must have a feeling for the science and its possibilities and its impossibilities, otherwise you're writing fantasy. Now, fantasy is also fine, but there is a distinction, although no one's ever been able to say just where the dividing lines come.

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

The Shuttle is to space flight what Lindbergh was to commercial aviation.

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

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.

The choice, as Wells once said, is the Universe-or nothing. . . . The challenge of the great spaces between the worlds is a stupendous one; but if we fail to meet it, the story of our race will be drawing to its close. Humanity will have turned its back upon the still untrodden heights and will be descending again the long slope that stretches, across a thousand million years of time, down to the shores of the primeval sea.