“If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist.”

The great secret of the successful fool is that he’s no fool at all.

Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else.

So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You’d better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can’t rearrange the universe.

Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?

It is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say ‘It’s as plain as the nose on your face.’ But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you?

He always pictured himself a libertarian, which to my way of thinking means “I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve”. It’s easy to believe that no one should depend on society for help when you yourself happen not to need such help.

My feeling is, quite simply, that if there is a God, He has done such a bad job that he isn’t worth discussing.

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

While he lives, he must think; while he thinks, he must dream.

Today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s science fact.

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

There is no more desire to live past one’s time than to die before it.

If we only obey those rules that we think are just and reasonable, then no rule will stand, for there is no rule that some will not think is unjust and unreasonable.

When asked for advice by beginners. Know your ending, I say, or the river of your story may finally sink into the desert sands and never reach the sea.

The Earth should not be cut up into hundreds of different sections, each inhabited by a self-defined segment of humanity that considers its own welfare and its own “national security” to be paramount above all other consideration.