“Science is magic that works.” — Kurt Vonnegut Quote

“Science is magic that works.”

“I hope to build a reputation as a science-fiction writer. That's the pitch. We'll see.”

“There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.”

“The champagne was dead. So it goes.”

“I had no talent for science. What was infinitely worse: all my fraternity brothers were engineers.”

“The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.”

“In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes.”

“Whereas apes must learn every skill they eventually acquire through trial-and-error and without a parent or other group member actively teaching them, humans can much more effectively build on the accumulated knowledge of previous generations.”

“Whether we like it or not, one day science will take God from us! This will be especially a great destruction for the weak minds!”

“Nothing good was learnt too swiftly. Knowledge should be a purposeful accumulance of observed experience, applied and tested to the full.”

“At the very moment that humans discovered the scale of the universe and found that their most unconstrained fancies were in fact dwarfed by the true dimensions of even the Milky Way Galaxy, they took steps that ensured that their descendants would be unable to see the stars at all. For a million years humans had grown up with a personal daily knowledge of the vault of heaven. In the last few thousand years they began building and emigrating to the cities. In the last few decades, a major fraction of the human population has abandoned a rustic way of life. As technology developed and the cities were polluted, the nights became starless. New generations grew to maturity wholly ignorant of the sky that had transfixed their ancestors and that had stimulated the modern age of science and technology. Without even noticing, just as astronomy entered a golden age most people cut themselves off from the sky, a cosmic isolationism that ended only with the dawn of space exploration.”