I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much . . . because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting.

But space travel can't ease the pressure on a planet grown too crowded not even with today's ships and probably not with any future ships-because stupid people won't leave the slopes of their home volcano even when it starts to smoke and rumble. What space travel does do is drain off the best brains: those smart enough to see a catastrophe before it happens, and with the guts to pay the price-abandon home, wealth, friends, relatives, everything-and go. That's a tiny fraction of one percent. But that's enough.

Physicians had gone to their graves calling Pasteur a liar, a fool, or worse—without examining evidence which their “common sense” told them was impossible.

Jill: 'I don't pay attention to politics.' Ben: 'You should. It's barely less important than your own heart beat.' Jill: 'I don't pay attention to that, either.'

Sex, whatever else it is, is an athletic skill. The more you practice, the more you can, the more you want to, the more you enjoy it, the less it tires you.

Minimize your therbligs until it becomes automatic; this doubles your effective lifetime - and thereby gives time to enjoy butterflies and kittens and rainbows.

The worst that can possibly have happened to him is death and that we are all in for---if not this morning, then in days, or weeks, or years at most.