"The imbalance between the grand mysteries of the Universe as opposed to our own feeble faculties, leads us to set very modest expectations as to what we shall and shan't be able to understand--and makes us passing suspicious of anyone who propounds dogma or seems to phant'sy he has got it all figured out."
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.
Hoyle: A star is basically a pretty simple object.
Voice from Audience: You'd look pretty simple too, Fred, from a distance of ten parsecs.
This exchange occurred at a seminar in Cambridge
Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.
Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting.
Nothing I have ever written was given the slightest deliberation. It was there in the typewriter and it came out, a total bypassing of the brain.
There was so much knowledge in the galaxy and he knew so little of it, understood so little of the little that he knew.
Most science fiction is about madness, or what is currently ruled to be madness; this is part of its attraction — it's always playing with how much the human mind can encompass.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true — hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.
Science fiction encourages us to explore... all the futures, good and bad, that the human mind can envision.
He does not get lost all the time, he investigates alternative destinations. He is not balding, he merely has follicle regression. Reminds me of a reader suggestion I used in Xanth: he's not a zombie, but living impaired.
A large fraction of the most interesting scientists, the ones on the cutting edge, have read a lot of science fiction at one time or another, either early enough that it may have played a part in their becoming scientists or at some later date just because they liked the ideas.
[Regarding politicians] . . . like any group of people selected for ambition and nothing else, they turn out to be a pretty bad lot. Like mandarins in China, colonial administrators in the British Empire, lawyers in old North America, or the reconstruction agencies after the Slaughter -- individually there are decent people who do some good, but as a class they’re amoral, vicious leeches with a good cover story.
Atoms are like people. Get lots of them together, never know what they’ll do.
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
"This generation is crucial; we have the resources to get mankind off this planet. If we don't do it, we may soon be facing a world of 15 billion people and more, a world in which it's all we can do to stay alive; a world without the resources to go into space and get rich... I don't think it will come to that because the vision of the future is so clear to me. We need realize only one thing: we do not inhabit 'Only One Earth.' Mankind doesn't live on Earth. Man lives in a solar system... Given [a] basic space civilization ... we'll have accomplished one goal: no single accident, no war, no one insane action will finish us off."
Like the wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we are, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment.
The intelligence of the planet is constant, and the population is growing.
My stories run up and bite me in the leg—I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.
If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.
Call it… joy. The thing like pleasure that you feel when you've done a good thing or passed up a real tempting chance to do a bad thing. Or when the unfolding of the universe just seems especially apt. It's nowhere near as flashy and intense as pleasure can be. Believe me! But it's got something going for it. Something that can make you do without pleasure, or even accept a lot of pain, to get it.
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
