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

It was fun. That was something I came to fairly late.

To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.

I think they’ve been baby bummers.

Faith is reason grown courageous.

When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.

Surmounting difficulty is the crucible that forms character.

The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image.

Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.

Some people have much more pull than other people. But when I say that the public has ultimate responsibility, I’m not saying it in a moral sense. I’m just saying it in the sense of...

The broadest pattern of history – namely, the differences between human societies on different continents – seems to me to be attributable to differences among continental environments, and not to biological differences among peoples themselves.

There’s a big overlap with the people you meet at the fantasy and science fiction cons.

I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author’s political views.

ESPN has said that they fired me without having been told to do so by Disney, and I actually believe that. I think they did it on their own.

I have been free for more than a month. Some people may think that that is long enough. Others may think that that is not quite long enough.

I have a kind of standard explanation why, which goes like this: Science fiction is one way of making sense out of a senseless world.

It distresses me that parents insist that their children read or make them read. The best way for children to treasure reading is to see the adults in their lives reading for their own pleasure.

About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.

The ‘Talk of the Town’ was really that in the 1940s: it was all about New York, it was only about New York, and it was about people.

My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have the potential to be comic stories the next.

Sometimes I feel I can’t quite master my written and spoken Spanish, because I’m too much a student of English. I would need another lifetime to learn it.

If you want an interesting party sometime, combine cocktails and a fresh box of crayons for everyone.

My definition of success is to live your life in a way that causes you to feel a ton of pleasure and very little pain – and because of your lifestyle, have the people around...

If what you are doing is not moving you towards your goals, then it’s moving you away from your goals.

I don’t know how a fellow looks, when he meets somebody that he hasn’t seen, hasn’t heard of, don’t know where they are, know nothing about the house, whatever.

Thousands of years ago, humans domesticated every possible large wild mammal species fulfilling all those criteria and worth domesticating, with the result that there have been no valuable additions of domestic animals in recent times,...

I finally decided one day, reading science fiction magazines of the time, I could do at least as well as some of these people are doing. So I finally made a serious effort.

No man will work for your interests unless they are his.

If we’d stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.

I think they completely overreacted by firing me, but in my mind I think this coming a month after Rush Limbaugh had a lot to do with it.

I had an opportunity to meet some members of the public, which I have been doing in Rangoon, too. It was very educational for me.

To my mind, the best SF addresses itself to problems of the here and now, or even to problems which have never been solved and never will be solved – I’m thinking of Philip K....

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

I like giving readers an opportunity to get a hold of me in that way and to read things I’ve written which might disappear otherwise.

It is obvious, moreover, that the formation of price in capitalist society must differ from the formation of price in social conditions based upon the simple production of commodities.

In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind.

I’m afraid I’m still trying to find that balance. Especially now that everyone wants a piece of me. I find that I have to become more and more reclusive, and pick and choose when I...

Then, like an old-time orator impressively he rose; I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.

The truth is that we can learn to condition our minds, bodies, and emotions to link pain or pleasure to whatever we choose. By changing what we link pain and pleasure to, we will instantly...

Passion is the genesis of genius.

Future shock is the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.

The question of whether it’s God’s green earth is not at center stage, except in the sense that if so, one is reminded with some regularity that He may be dying.

All human societies go through fads in which they temporarily either adopt practices of little use or else abandon practices of considerable use.

Only towards the end of this process are any of the chapters in fully readable condition, a state of affairs that used to alarm my wife. But Joan’s got used to it.

The other inmates stand in a long straight line, flanked by guards, and I am dragged past them. I do not respect them, because they will not run – will not try to escape.

I don’t like gourmet cooking or “this” cooking or “that” cooking. I like good cooking.

Playing football is obviously very strenuous. It’s exhausting. You have to try very hard in football. But there’s no heroic risk involved.

Within four or five years the US might be getting 10 percent of its gasoline from ethanol – that would be like creating a new Indonesia.

I hate to cook and love to eat.

Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.