"2001 was written in an age which now lies beyond one of the great divides in human history; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out on to the Sea of Tranquility. Now history and fiction have become inexorably intertwined."

"If children have interests then education happens."

"If the house is to be demolished tomorrow anyhow, people seem to feel, we may as well burn the furniture today. None of our problems are insoluble...But it seems clear that to prevail we humans will have to act with a smartness and selflessness that has so far eluded us during our long and tangled history."

"What we need is a machine that will let us see the other guy’s point of view."

"A single test which proves some piece of theory wrong is more valuable than a hundred tests showing that idea might be true."

"Science demands patience."