Two lives met across death and centuries. To ask what it meant is meaningless. There is no destiny. But sometimes there is bravery

It is a truism that the structure of a society is basically determined by its technology. Not in an absolute sense-there may be totally different cultures using identical tools-but the tools settle the possibilities; you can't have interstellar trade without spaceships. A race limited to a single planet, possessing a high knowledge of mechanics but with its basic machines of industry and war requiring a large capital investment, will inevitably tend toward collectivism under one name or another. Free enterprise needs elbow room.

We live with our archetypes, but can we live in them?

Will none wipe the sneer off the face of the cosmos?

Let us settle down to the serious business of getting drunk.

Machines can only find what ignorant men have programmed them to find.

Better a life like a falling star, brief bright across the dark, than the long, long waiting of the immortals, loveless and cheerlessly wise.