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I have now reigned above fifty years in victory and peace, beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to be wanting for my felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to fourteen. O man, place not thy confidence in this present world!
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Science fiction is never about the future, in the same way history is rarely about the past: they're both parable formats for examining or commenting on the present.
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It is often wonderful how putting down on paper a clear statement of a case helps one to see, not perhaps the way out, but the way in.
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Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
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The more I compose, the more I know that I don't know it all. I think it's a good way to start. If you think you know it all, the work becomes a repetition of what you've already done.
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Just as modern motorways have no room for ox-carts or wandering pedestrians, so modern society has little place for lives and ways that are too eccentric.
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It is time, therefore, to abandon the superstition that natural science cannot be regarded as logically respectable until philosophers have solved the problem of induction. The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future.
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Every blade of grass is a study; and to produce two, where there was but one, is both a profit and a pleasure.
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The misery which follows pleasure is the pleasure which follows misery. The pleasure and misery of mankind revolve like a wheel.
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One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.
