Arthur Clarke says that I am first in science and second in science fiction in accordance with an agreement we have made. I say he is first in science fiction and second in science.

I don't expect to live forever, nor do I repine over that, but I am weak enough to want to be remembered forever. - Yet how few of those who have lived, even of those who have accomplished far more than I have, linger on in world memory for even a single century after death

The whole world might know you and acclaim you, but someone in the past, forever unreachable, forever unknowing, spoils it all.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Once, when a religionist denounced me in unmeasured terms, I sent him a card saying, "I am sure you believe that I will go to hell when I die, and that once there I will suffer all the pains and tortures the sadistic ingenuity of your deity can devise and that this torture will continue forever. Isn't that enough for you? Do you have to call me bad names in addition?"

Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else.

There seems to be a feeling that anything that is natural is good. Strychnine is natural.