You can't have modern states based on ideas which have been out of date for a thousand years.

There's a lot to be said for having a small manageable dream.

We haven't yet found a speck of evidence for biology on another world, so we have no objective way to judge whether life is a onetime fluke or a near-inevitable phenomenon.

No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.

In space, you don't get that much noise. Noise doesn't propagate in a vacuum.