I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived. I believe that all the best faculties of a mature human being exist in the child. . . that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of these faculties is the power of imagination.

If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic.

Manhood is patience. Mastery is nine time patience

What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing.

You must come to terms with your wholeself. the wholeness which exceeds all our virtue and all our vice.

To oppose something is to maintain it.

There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world more important than that wall. Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on.