…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 massacre,...

There is nothing left of him but curiosity and a pair of eyes.

We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.

Men are jerks. Women are psychotic.

Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused...

I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.

Homo Americanus is going to go on speaking and writing the way he always has, no matter what dictionary he owns.

The trouble with the world is that people are still superstitious instead of scientific. If everybody would study science more, there wouldn’t be all the trouble there was.

I have no culture, no humane harmony in my brains. I can’t live without a culture anymore.

No more apologies! So we’re poor! All right, we’re poor! This is America! And America is one place in this sorry world where people Shouldn’t have to apologize for being poor. The question in America...

There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unlesslaughter can be said to remedy anything.

Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, ‘Why, why, why?’ Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.

This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.

the ideas in the piece seemed to make such great sense.

The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.

The Fourteenth Book is entitled, “What can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?” It doesn’t take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of...

I don’t know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves “Our Lady of the Perpetual Astonishment

Rumfoord had known that Constant would try to debase the picture by using it in commerce. Constant’s father had done a similar thing when he found he could not buy Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa” at any...

Sordid things, for the most part, are what make human beings, my father included, move. That’s what it is to be human, I’m afraid.

Money began talking to Ben again–not big money this time, but little money. It niggled and nagged and carped and whined at him, as full of fears and bitterness as a spinster witch.–“Money Talks

I became a so-called science fiction writer when someone decreed that I was a science fiction writer. I did not want to be classified as one, so I wondered in what way I’d offended that...

I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: “C-Students from Yale.”George W. Bush...

And, if you’ll investigate the history of science, my dear boy, I think you’ll find that most of the really big ideas have come from intelligent playfulness. All the sober, thin-lipped concentration is really just...

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

Be patient, Ophelia.Love,Hamlet

I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.

Well, to admire the hell out of Jesus Christ or of everyone who speaks well. And, well my grandfather said is– if– what Jesus said was marvelous. What does it matter whether he was God...

And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It’s good for you.

Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes.

Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.

The human beings also passed canteens, which guards would fill with water. When food came in, the human beings were quiet and trusting and beautiful. They shared.

He looked around at the perfectly white world, felt the wet kisses of the snowflakes, pondered hidden meanings in the pale yellow streetlights that shone in a world so whitely asleep. “Beautiful,” he whispered.

If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings,” said the Tralfamadorian, “I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by ‘free will.’ I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied...

As an old, old man, Trout would be asked by Dr. Thor Lembrig, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, if he feared the future. He would give this reply: ‘Mr. Secretary-General, it is the past...

Since Alice had never received any religious instruction, and since she had led a blameless life, she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for...

Trust a crowd to look at the wrong end of a miracle every time.

And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud.

Tis better to have love and lustThan to let our apparatus rust.

As the new Adam, it might be said, his final act was to cast the Apple of Knowledge into the deep blue sea.

Unexpected travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God

Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

Perhaps some people really are born unhappy. I surely hope not. Speaking for my sister and myself: We were born with the capacity and determination to be utterly happy all the time. Perhaps even in...

Trzymajcie się z dala od człowieka, który pracował w pocie czoła nad rozwiązaniem jakiejś zagadki, rozwiązał ją i stwierdził, że nie jest mądrzejszy niż przedtem – powiada Bokonon. – Przepełnia go bowiem mordercza pogarda do...

If you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, D.C. I know a couple of bright seventh graders who would not be welcome in Washington D.C.