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

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)

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

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.

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

I am Sunai, ” he said. “I am holy fire. And if I have to burn the world to cleanse it, so help me, I will.

First impression is not the last reflection of a true friend, so if you are head over heels for someone who just bought you a cake, you'd better think twice before devouring your misery.

I had wanted to compromise with Fate: to escape occasional great agonies by submitting to a whole life of privation and small pains.

Vermeer's skill was in combining few colors, mixing little and using layers of lakes and varnishes to build up the illusion of life

He rose without a friend and sat down without an enemy.

I was a frustrated astronaut all my life. I grew up at a time when space seemed to have no boundaries, and lots of us presumed humans would be living on the moon and landing on Mars.

I hate getting off the elevator on the wrong floor? Anyone ever do that... and then you have to turn around and face those people. I feel like I owe everyone in there an explanation.

It is the anonymous "they," the enigmatic "they" who are in charge. Who is "they"? I don't know. Nobody knows. Not even "they" themselves.

It is crazy to postulate a trillion (causally unconnected) universes to explain the features of one universe, when postulating one entity (God) will do the job.

To know things as they are is better than to believe things as they seem.