Intelligence is just a tool to be used toward a goal, and goals are not always chosen intelligently.

Species evolve to meet the environment. An intelligent species changes the environment to suit itself. As soon as a species becomes intelligent, it should stop evolving.

In the world of words the imagination is one of the forces of nature.

As for AIDS, it's a plague. We are human, we get plagues. They come along every so often, kill off two thirds of the population; in the next generation it's a quarter; after that it's a childhood disease.

A civilization has the ethics it can afford

I'd visit the near future, close enough that someone might want to talk to Larry Niven and can figure out the language; distant enough to get me decent medical techniques and a ticket to the Moon.

Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.