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1 " Spray a book with insect spray, drop it in a bag, add some mothballs and seal it. Put it in another bag and seal it. Another. The packages piled up on the floor, each a book sealed in four plastic envelopes. "
― Larry Niven , Lucifer's Hammer
2 " The value of a thing is what that thing will bring. -Legal Maxim "
3 " The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in. - Robert A. Heinlein "
4 " Dune; Nova; Double Star; The Corridors of Time; Cat's Cradle; Half Past Human; Murder in Retrospect; Gideon's Day; The Red Right Hand; The Trojan Hearse; A Deadly Shade of Gold; Conjure Wife; Rosemary's Baby; Silverlock; King Conan. He'd packed books not to entertain, nor even to illustrate philosophies of life, but to rebuild civilization. "
5 " Hopeless causes are the only ones worth fighting for. The fight for the taxpayer is the most hopeless of them all. "
6 " To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection. "
7 " work, whatever it must be, is the service of God and of the community and therefore the expression of man's dignity. - Emil Brunner, Gifford Lectures, 1948 "
8 " Johnny, did you ever hear of the Club of Rome?" Johnny had, but the audience would need reminding. "They were the people who did computer simulations to find out how long we could get along on our natural resources. Even with zero population growth—" "They tell us we're finished," Sharps broke in. "And that's stupid. We're only finished because they won't let us really use technology. They say we're running out of metals. There's more metal in one little asteroid than was mined all over the world in the last five years! And there are hundreds of thousands of asteroids. All we have to do is go get 'em." "Can we?" "You bet! Even with the technology we already have, we could do it. Johnny, out there in space it's raining soup, and we don't even know about soup bowls. "
9 " To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection. -H. Poincare "
10 " A civilization has the ethics it can afford. We "
11 " They got out and ran toward half of a bridge. Below the bridge's twisted end was fire. Fire crawled away from the greater blaze, stopped, convulsed, then fell still. The car burned, casting its bonfire light on the canyon and the stream at its bottom. "
12 " How often had life begun on Earth, and been scalded from its face, and formed again? "
13 " But if he's right, then…" Harvey glanced at the globe he had brought from his office. He had outlined circles in Magic Marker: the Sea of Japan, the Bay of Bengal, the arc of islands that mark the Indies Sea, a double circle within the Gulf of Mexico. If an asteroid strike had made any one of those, the oceans would have boiled, all life would have been cremated. How often had life begun on Earth, and been scalded from its face, and formed again? "
14 " And Maureen and Charlotte would stand guard if Al didn't, and to hell with that. The only good thing about Hammerfall, women's lib was dead milliseconds after Hammerstrike. "
15 " guilt… "
16 " It's plate tectonics," Mark said. "You know, the continents float around on top of the melted rock inside the Earth." Frank listened absently. No point in correcting Mark. But the Mojave was certainly a better place. "
17 " Among the deficiencies common to the Italian and the U.S. postal systems are: - inefficiency, and delays in deliveries - old-fashioned organization - low efficiency and low salaries of personnel - high frequency of strikes - very high operational deficit - Roberto Vacca, The Coming Dark Age "
18 " Rick laughed. "Yeah. Everybody's gonna start painting their borders in neon orange a mile wide. Then all the college kids will scream about damage to the environment "
