I agree with you, Captain, he whispered. The human race has to live with its conscience. Whatever the Hermians argue, survival is not everything.
He felt no regrets as the work of a lifetime was swept away. He had labored to take man to the stars, and, in the moment of success, the stars—the aloof, indifferent stars—had come to him. This was th...
Finally, I would like to assure my many Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim friends that I am sincerely happy that the religion which Chance has given you has contributed to your peace of m...
Belief in God is apparently a psychological arti-fact of mammalian reproduction.
All that had gone before was not a thousandth of what was yet to come; the story of this star had barely begun.
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?
Yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word newspaper, of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated...
One thing seems certain. Our galaxy is now in the brief springtime of its life—a springtime made glorious by such brilliant blue-white stars as Vega and Sirius, and, on a more humble scale, our own Su...
Now I'm a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.
Death focuses the mind on the things that really matter: why are we here, and what should we do?
Because each of us is the sum of all we have ever experienced. Only the very young have a clean slate.
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
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.
Like everything that was worth doing, that would take time and practice.
Naturally, the system would have to be rigidly closed, recycling all food, air, and other expendables. But, of course, that’s just how the Earth operates—on a slightly larger scale.
In this single galaxy of ours there are eighty-seven thousand million suns. [...] In challenging it, you would be like ants attempting to label and classify all the grains of sand in all the deserts o...
In some ways, admitted the Overlord gravely. In others perhaps a better analogy can be found in the history of your colonial powers. The Roman and British Empires, for that reason, have always been of...
Imagine that you're an intelligent extraterrestrial, concerned only with verifiable truths. You discover a species that has divided itself into thousands - no, by now millions - of tribal groups holdi...
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.
The next day the government of South Africa announced that full civil rights would be restored to the white minority.