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.

Anybody can find infinite Mandelbrot figures in his navel.

In Harvest of Stars, there is this notion, not original with me of course, that it will become possible to download at least the basic aspects of a human personality into a machine program.

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

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

A fanatic is a man who, when he's lost sight of his purpose, redoubles his effort.

A fanatic's willingness to kill or be killed in the service of a cause cannot prove the rightness of that cause.