The visions we offer our children shape the future. It _matters_ what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.

Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.

When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shinning because of distant nuclear fusion.

You're an interesting species, an interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.

And you are made of a hundred trillion cells. We are, each of us, a multitude.

Looking at fires when high, by the way, especially through one of those prism kaleidoscopes which image their surroundings, is an extraordinarily moving and beautiful experience.

I would be very ashamed of my civilization if we did not try to find out if there is life in outer space.