In the middle 1970s an astronomer I admire put together a modest manifesto called "Objections to Astrology" and asked me to endorse it. I struggled with his wording, and in the end found myself unable to sign, not because I thought astrology has any validity whatever, but because I felt (and still feel) that the tone of the statement was authoritarian.

Any civilization that doesn't develop space travel dies.

Those who seek power at any price detect a societal weakness, a fear that they can ride into office.

We have entered, almost without noticing, an age of exploration and discovery unparalleled since the Renaissance.

We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.