“Above all, I would not expect a wise race, at great expense, to set loose an army of self-replicating robots.”

It would be a pity if, frustrated by the price of travel, we elected to become a society that never made contact, that never gave SETI a fair chance.

In the past, on Earth, it has largely been to exploit foreign resources and to expand the domestic territory.

Present annual world energy consumption is about equal to the annihilation energy of 4 tons of matter.

Years of science fiction have produced a mindset that it is human destiny to expand from Earth, to the Moon, to Mars, to the stars.

No one can deny the excitement of visiting another world.

The sun and its retinue of planets drift as a group through the vast gulfs of space that separate the stars.

Heads of warring nations could learn a lot about how to achieve lasting peace by watching dogs and cats who live in the same house.

If you want to win a race you have to go a little berserk.

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

We will stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power. We will stop that nuclear arms race that could happen in the Middle East.

What a child does not know and does not want to know of race and color and class, he learns soon enough as he grows to see each man flipped inexorably into some predestined groove like a penny or a sovereign in a banker’s rack.

I went to the store to buy a race car for my son’s birthday, and the next thing I know I was working part time for the holidays. Then in February 2002, I started working on a plan to purchase the store.

Pretending and trying to be someone else is the official pastime of the human race. And the easiest thing in the world is to be yourself.

The humor of jazz is rich and many-sided. Some of it is obvious enough to make a dog laugh.