"But it had been widely argued that advanced intelligence could never arise in the sea, there were not enough challenges in so benign and unvarying an environment."

"A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets."

"This had not endeared him to exobiologists such as Dr Perera, who took exactly the opposite view. To them, the only purpose of the Universe was the production of intelligence, and they were apt to talk sneeringly about purely astronomical phenomena, 'Mere dead matter' was one of their favourite phrases."

"We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40 - and half the things he knows at 40 hadn't been discovered when he was 20?"

"Now times had changed, and the inherited wisdom of the past had become folly."

"Moses Kaldor had always loved mountains, they made him feel nearer to the God whose nonexistence he still sometimes resented."

"Many of the fundamental physical constants-which as far as one could see, God could have given any value He liked-are in fact very precised adjusted, or fine-tuned, to produce the only kind of Universe that makes our existence possible."

"Perhaps, as some wit remarked, the best proof that there is Intelligent Life in Outer Space is the fact it hasn't come here. Well, it can't hide forever - one day we will overhear it."

"Sometimes, during the lonely hours on the control deck, Bowman would listen to this radiation. He would turn up the gain until the room filled with a crackling, hissing roar; out of this background, at irregular intervals, emerged brief whistles and peeps like the cries of demented birds. It was an eerie sound, for it had nothing to do with Man; it was as lonely and meaningless as the murmur of waves on a beach, or the distant crash of thunder beyond the horizon."

"It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything."

"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

"Jan had always been a good pianist, and now he was the finest in the world."

"They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of omnipotence, their experiments did not always succeed."

"Three million years! The infinitely crowded panorama of written history, with its empires and its kings, its triumphs and its tragedies, covered barely one thousandth of this appalling span of time."

"I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about."

"These leaders must not believe they are actually being watched, for their behavior in no way reflects the possible existence of a set of values or ethical laws that supersedes their own dominion."

"It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars."

"I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected President but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power."

"Anything that had happened once on Earth should be expected millions of times elsewhere in the Universe, that was almost an article of faith among scientists."

"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion."

"It is hard to draw any line between compassion and love."

"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."

"There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence-or even in life. Both may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly's wings. The insect would fly just as well without them."

"The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible."

"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering."

"In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say 'I have learned' and 'I have loved,' you will also be able to say 'I have been happy."

"But most of the time, with a contented resignation that comes normally to a man only at the end of a long and busy life, he sat before the keyboard and filled the air with his beloved Bach. Perhaps he was deceiving himself, perhaps this was some merciful trick of the mind but now it seemed to Jan that this what he had always wished to do. His secret ambition had at last dared to emerge into the full light of consciousness. Jan had always been a good pianist, and now he was the finest in the world."

"He had a suspicion of plausible answers, they were so often wrong."

"The Chairman glared across three hundred and eighty thousand kilometers of space at Conrad Taylor, who reluctantly subsided, like a volcano biding its time."

"I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her."

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

"Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all."

"Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: 1- It's completely impossible. 2- It's possible, but it's not worth doing. 3- I said it was a good idea all along."

"There were, however, a few exceptions.One was Norma Dodsworth, the poet, who had not unpleasantly drunk but had been sensible enough to pass out before any violent action proved necessary. He had been deposited, not very gently, on the lawn, where it was hoped that a hyena would give him a rude awakening. For all practical purposes he could, therefore, be regarded as absent."

"I am an optimist. Anyone interested in the future has to be otherwise he would simply shoot himself."

"Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading manuals without the software."

"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."

"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."

"There's no real objection to escapism, in the right places... We all want to escape occasionally. But science fiction is often very far from escapism, in fact you might say that science fiction is escape into reality... It's a fiction which does concern itself with real issues: the origin of man; our future. In fact I can't think of any form of literature which is more concerned with real issues, reality."

"He did not know that the Old One was his father, for such a relationship was utterly beyond his understanding, but as he looked at the emaciated body he felt a dim disquiet that was the ancestor of sadness."

"Men knew better than they realized, when they placed the abode of the gods beyond the reach of gravity."

"Magic's just science that we don't understand yet."

"Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests."

"Oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?"

"Even more alarming were persistent rumors that someone had smuggled an Emotion Amplifier on board 'Mentor'. The so-called joy machines were banned on all planets, except under strict medical control; but there would always be people to whom reality was not good enough, and who would want to try something better."

"Just like the cosmonauts and their pee plants, all we have is each other."

"And yet, even while they baffled him, they aroused within his heart a feeling he had never known before. When- which was not often, but sometimes happened- they burst into tears of utter frustration or despair, their tiny disappointments seemed to him more tragic than Man's long retreat after the loss of his Galactic Empire. That was something too huge and remote for comprehension, but the weeping of a child could pierce one to the heart.Alvin had met love in Diaspar, but now he was learning something equally precious, and without which love itself could never reach its highest fulfillment but must remain forever incomplete. He was learning tenderness."

"As his body became more and more defenseless, so his means of offense became steadily more frightful."

"Please leave me alone, let me go on to the stars."