Why do people in this age think their own impoverished lives must be the norm of the universe?

There are some ideas so stupid that only intellectuals can believe in them, particularly left-wing intellectuals.

Anybody can find infinite Mandelbrot figures in his navel.

Happier are all men than the dwellers in Faerie – or the gods, for that matter…Better a life like a falling star, bright across the dark, than a deathlessness that can see naught above or beyond itself…the day draws nigh when Faerie shall fade, the Erlking himself shrink to a woodland sprite and then to nothing, and the gods go under. And the worst of it is, I cannot believe it wrong that the immortals will not live forever.

If we knew exactly what to expect throughout the Solar System, we would have no reason to explore it.

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.

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.