Hal Clement

"It seems that these men are primitive enough to have a marked tendency toward superstition—ascribing things they don’t understand to supernatural intervention."

"I am resigned to living in a chess-type universe—few and simple rules, but infinite combinations of them. But it would be nice to know an answer sometime."

"If you want adventure, you made a mistake exploring space. The only space adventures I've heard of are second-hand stories built on guesswork; the people who really had them weren't around to tell about it."

"The captain, thinking over this event afterward, realized that by his own lifelong standards he had a crew composed entirely of lunatics, with himself well to the front in degree of aberration; but he was fairly sure that this particular form of insanity was going to be useful."

"No one likes to be watched constantly by someone he can’t see."

"What’s the use of a high school education if you can’t recall it when needed later on?"

"Maybe we’ve been taking nova precautions for a red dwarf."

"[Clement] could imagine very alien worlds, but he could never imagine a protagonist who was not reasonably bright and open to logical persuasion."