There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.
Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference we should each be treated with appropriate respect.
If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run-and often in the short one-the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.
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.
One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn’t require religion at all.
Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses.
Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.
Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of god a pretty good definition of insanity?
Getting information from the internet is like getting a glass of water from the Niagara Falls.
A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.
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.
Sometimes when I’m in a bookstore or library, I am overwhelmed by all the things that I do not know. Then I am seized by a powerful desire to read all the books, one by one.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have both free will and a benevolent higher power who protects you from yourself.
The phenomenon of UFO doesn’t say anything about the presence of intelligence in space. It just shows how rare it is here on the earth.
The object of teaching a child is to enable the child to get along without the teacher. We need to educate our children for their future, not our past...
One theory which can no longer be taken very seriously is that UFOs are interstellar spaceships.
The realisation that our small planet is only one of many worlds gives mankind the perspective it needs to realise sooner that our own world belongs to all its creatures.
Now, before you make a movie, you have to have a script, and before you have a script, you have to have a story; though some avant-garde directors have tried to dispense with the latter item, you’ll find their work only at art theaters.
There is the possibility that humankind can outgrow its infantile tendencies, as I suggested in Childhood’s End. But it is amazing how childishly gullible humans are.
It was one thing to have guessed it, another to have had that guess confirmed beyond possibility of refutation.