We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos.

A man who for an entire week does nothing but hit himself over the head has little reason to be proud.

Futurologists have been multiplying like flies since the day Herman Kahn made Cassandra's profession "scientific," yet somehow not one of them has come out with the clear statement that we have wholly abandoned ourselves to the mercy of technological progress. The roles are now reversed: humanity becomes, for technology, a means, an instrument for achieving a goal unknown and unknowable.

A smart machine will first consider which is more worth its while: to perform the given task or, instead, to figure some way out of it.

Even a fool could see that one didn't need a war, nuclear or otherwise, to destroy oneself; the rising cost of weaponry could do that quite nicely.

Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him. Man can serve his age or rebel against it, but the target of his cooperation or rebellion comes to him from outside.

Practically all SF is trash.