We realized that among us, among all the races, we had a staggering fund of knowledge and of techniques - that working together, by putting together … - Clifford D. Simak

We came into a homeless frontier, a place where we were not welcome, where nothing that lived was welcome, where thought and logic were abhorrent and we were frightened, but we went into this place because the universe lay before us, and if we were to know ourselves, we must know the universe...

There’s a planet out there somewhere. Fairly close, I’d guess. A freewheeling planet, not tied to any sun, although I gather that it could insert itself into a solar system any time it wishes.” “That would take some doing. It would mess up the orbits of all the other planets.” “Not necessarily,” said Maxwell. “It wouldn’t have to take an orbit in the same plane as the other planets. That would hold down the effect of its being there.

Most authorities in economics and sociology regard such an organization as a city an impossible structure, not only from the economic standpoint, but from the sociological and psychological as well. No creature of the highly nervous structure necessary to develop a culture, they point out, would be able to survive within such restricted limits. The result, if it were tried, these authorities say, would lead to mass neuroticism which in a short period of time would destroy the very culture which had built the city.