Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.

The heart of manipulation is to empathize without being touched.

If there be only hours, at least learn what there is time to learn.

Politics is good; when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there's always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is losing irrelevant.

When I began writing science fiction in the middle 60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months.

But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence.

One of his greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.