Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference; we should each be treated with appropriate respect.
But it had been widely argued that advanced intelligence could never arise in the sea; there were not enough challenges in so benign and unvarying an environment.
Some dangers are so spectacular and so much beyond normal experience that the mind refuses to accept them as real, and watches the approach of doom without any sense of apprehension. The man who looks at the onrushing tidal wave, the descending avala...
What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.
After their encounter on the approach to Jupiter, there would aways be a secret bond between them---not of love, but of tenderness, which is often more enduring.
They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of omnipotence; their experiments did not always succeed.
Men knew better than they realized, when they placed the abode of the gods beyond the reach of gravity.
It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.
All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe.
Humor was the enemy of desire.
