No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.

But it is no good using the tongs of reason to pull the Fundamentalists' chestnuts out of the fire of contradiction. Their real troubles lie elsewhere.

You cannot do only one thing.

(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)

In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable

People are the quintessential element in all technology... Once we recognize the inescapable human nexus of all technology our attitude toward the reliability problem is fundamentally changed.

Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.

Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming.

Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

The only thing we can really count on in this uncertain world is human unreliability itself.

Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.

God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly

Old or young, light or dark, full or frail, every woman has qualities that make her beautiful.

He thought of his remembrance of Jordan, thought of how it hurt to even look at Isabelle and Clary. Without memory, they were lost. And nobody wanted someone they loved to be lost.

The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen" -- which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.

The more visible signs of protest are gone, but I think there is a realization that the tactics of the late sixties are not sufficient to meet the challenges of the seventies.

The one thing about being a parent is the ability to be selfless: To give up the things you want and need for the benefit of someone else.

Books and minds only work when they're open.

I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.

Anticipation leads the way to victory, and is the spur to conquest.