All quotes

Yes, Mr. Ambassador, I think I have some information of interest. What we have here is undoubtedly a 'space ark.' It's an old idea in the astronautical literature. I've been able to trace it back to the British physicist J. D. Bernal, who…

Rama was a prize worth any risk short of a suicide mission. And, of course, it might even come to that. Commander Norton had no illusions on this score. For the first time in a hundred years, an element of total uncertainty had entered…

A particular event may be infinitesimally probable, but the probability is always greater than zero.

Nothing has to be true, but everything has to sound true.

The most hopelessly stupid man is he who is not aware that he is wise.

Tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune.

That’s one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones.

It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a…

When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I…

Billy Pilgrim: Why me? Tralfamadorians: That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber? Billy Pilgrim: Yes…

Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day. He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941. He has gone back through that door to find…

You know—we’ve had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. ‘My God, my…

"You. What is the moral difference, if any, between the soldier and the civilian?" "The difference," I answered carefully, "lies in the field of civic virtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of…

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that 'violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it…

I have never been able to see how a thirty-year-old moron can vote more wisely than a fifteen-year-old genius.

Laws of physics and mathematics are like a coordinate system that runs in only one dimension. Perhaps there is another dimension perpendicular to it, invisible to those laws of physics, describing the same things with different rules, and…

Conformity and rebellion...both ways are simple-minded — they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.

It is upon moral qualities that a society is ultimately founded. All the prosperity and technological sophistication in the world is of no use without that foundation.

No one ever said it was easy to hew to a strict code of conduct. Really, the difficulties involved — the missteps we make along the way — are what make it interesting. The internal, and external, struggle, between our base impulses and the…

The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people — and this is true whether…

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

"Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

I'd far rather be happy than right any day.

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.

"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is."

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more…

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Here's some advice. Stay alive.

Flight is essential, but I can't let my fear show.

May the odds be ever in your favor!