I think that science fiction has a distinct therapeutic value because all of it has as its primary postulate that the world does change. I cannot overemphasize the importance of that idea.

The hardest part of gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche.

Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

Art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudointellectual masturbation . . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce -- render emotional -- his audience, each time.

Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.

I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching, oversize brain case and the opposable thumb, this animal barely up from the apes, will endure --will endure longer than his home planet, will spread out to the other planets, to the stars, and beyond, carrying with him his honesty, his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage --and his noble essential decency. This I believe with all my heart.

Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to account for the accomplishments of genius.