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

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

He had seen too much of the cosmos to have any great faith in man's ability to understand it.

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

The single definition of government I've ever seen that makes sense is that it's the organization which claims the right to kill people who won't do what it wants.

I think the first duty of all art, including fiction of any kind, is to entertain. That is to say, to hold interest. No matter how worthy the message of something, if it's dull, you're just not communicating.

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.