Quotes

"The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."

"The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever."

"We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us."

"For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven't forgotten. The open road still softly calls."

"There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, 'Morning, boys, how's the water?' And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, 'What the hell is water?'"

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

"It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. 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 most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

"I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them."

"A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm."

"You just can't differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans."

"We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good."

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

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

"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."

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

"If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along."

"We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done."

"A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human."

"Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine."

"I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted."

"The danger is not that a particular class of machines is unattainable, but that a particular class of people is attempting to attain it."

"Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change."

"Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious."

"We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special."

"The genie is out of the bottle. We need to move forward on artificial intelligence development, but we also need to be mindful of its very real dangers."

"I'd rather be a rising ape than a falling angel."

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

"The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed."

"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation."

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."

"More human than human is our motto."

"The question isn't whether intelligent machines can have any emotions, but whether machines can be intelligent without any emotions."

"By far the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it."

"Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive."

"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings."

"The only thing I can't stand about science fiction is how much of it comes true."

"You don't start writing good science fiction because you know a lot about science. You start writing good science fiction because you know a lot about people."

"There's nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns."

"In order to rise from its own ashes, a phoenix first must burn."

"There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it."

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

"Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

"There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line."

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

"It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane."

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them."

"There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real."

"If they give you ruled paper, write the other way."

"We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?"

"Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories."

"Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself."

"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."

"The measure of intelligence is the ability to change."

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."

"Dreams feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange."

"Replicants are like any other machine. They're either a benefit or a hazard. If they're a benefit, it's not my problem."