Daily Digest

“I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here.”

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

“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.”

“Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.”

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

“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. 2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. 3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

“All that had gone before was not a thousandth of what was yet to come; the story of this star had barely begun.”

“The intelligent minority of this world will mark 1 January 2001 as the real beginning of the 21st century and the Third Millennium.”

“It is a good principle in science not to believe any 'fact'---however well attested---until it fits into some accepted frame of reference. Occasionally, of course, an observation can shatter the frame and force the construction of a new one, but that is extremely rare. Galileos and Einsteins seldom appear more than once per century, which is just as well for the equanimity of mankind.”

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

“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.”

“But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.”

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

“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.”

“It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.”

“New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can't be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!”

“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.”

“How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.”

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

“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 of the world. [...] It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man.”

“This is the first age that's ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.”

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

“Humor was the enemy of desire.”

“My favourite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence. [Sources and Acknowledgements: Chapter 19]”

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

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

“Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.”

“After their encounter on the approach to Jupiter, there would aways be a secret bond between them---not of love, but of tenderness, which is often more enduring.”

“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.”

“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?”

“Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.”

“Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.”

“I don't believe in astrology; I'm a Sagittarius and we're skeptical.”

“The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.”

“They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of omnipotence; their experiments did not always succeed.”

“The first true men had tools and weapons only a little better than those of their ancestors a million years earlier, but they could use them with far greater skill. And somewhere in the shadowy centuries that had gone before they had invented the most essential tool of all, though it could be neither seen nor touched. They had learned to speak, and so had won their first great victory over Time. Now the knowledge of one generation could be handed on to the next, so that each age could profit from those that had gone before. Unlike the animals, who knew only the present, Man had acquired a past; and he was beginning to grope toward a future. He was also learning to harness the force of nature; with the taming of fire, he had laid the foundations of technology and left his animal origins far behind. Stone gave way to bronze, and then to iron. Hunting was succeeded by agriculture. The tribe grew into the village, the village into the town. Speech became eternal, thanks to certain marks on stone and clay and papyrus. Presently he invented philosophy, and religion. And he peopled the sky, not altogether inaccurately, with gods. As his body became more and more defenseless, so his means of offense became steadily more frightful. With stone and bronze and iron and steel he had run the gamut of everything that could pierce and slash, and quite early in time he had learned how to strike down his victims from a distance. The spear, the bow the gun and finally the guided missile had given him weapons of infinite range and all but infinite power. Without those weapons, often though he had used them against himself, Man would never have conquered his world. Into them he had put his heart and soul, and for ages they had served him well. But now, as long as they existed, he was living on borrowed time.”

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

“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.”

“A hundred failures would not matter, when one single success could change the destiny of the world.”

“The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.”

“He found it both sad and fascinating that only through an artificial universe of video images could she establish contact with the real world.”

“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.”

“One of the greatest tragedies in mankind's entire history may be that morality was hijacked by religion.”

“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.”

“Meteorites don’t fall on the Earth. They fall on the Sun and the Earth gets in the way.” - John W. Campbell”

“Outro pensamento lhe ocorria sempre que varria com os olhos aquelas minúsculas manchetes eletrônicas. Quanto mais maravilhoso o meio de comunicação, mais trivial, medíocre ou deprimente seu conteúdo parecia ser. Acidentes, crimes, desastres naturais ou provocados pelo homem, ameaças de conflito, editoriais sombrios - essas coisas ainda pareciam ser a preocupação principal dos milhões de palavras borrifadas no éter. E, no entanto, Floyd também se perguntava se isso de fato seria ruim; os jornais de Utopia, ele concluíra há muito tempo, seriam terrivelmente chatos.”

“I don’t believe in astrology; I’m a Sagittarius and we’re skeptical.”