I have not long to live. I have lasted more than a man's average allotted span, and while I still am hale and hearty, I know full well the hand of time , while it may miss a man at one reaping, will get him at the next.

We came into a homeless frontier, a place where we were not welcome, where nothing that lived was welcome, where thought and logic were abhorrent and we were frightened, but we went into this place because the universe lay before us, and if we were to know ourselves, we must know the universe

These are the stories the Dogs tell, when the fires burn high and the wind is from the north.

Here lies one from a distant star, but the soil is not alien to him, for in death he belongs to the universe.

When I talk of the purpose of life, I am thinking not only of human life, but of all life on Earth and of the life which must exist upon other planets throughout the universe.

If the means were available, we could trace our ancestry - yours and mine - back to the first blob of life-like material that came into being on the planet.

There is a plan, it seems to me, that reaches out of the electron to the rim of the universe and what this plan may be or how it came about is beyond my feeble intellect. But if we are looking for something on which to pin our faith- and, indeed, our hope- the plan might well be it. I think we have thought too small and have been too afraid.