The colonization of space is the only possible salvation of Earth. - Isaac Asimov

you can't fight a tremendous, emotion filled drive with cold mathematics. This man Hilder has invented a name, 'Wasters.' Slowly he has built this name up into a gigantic conspiracy; a gang of brutal, profit-seeking wretches raping Earth for their own immediate benefit. "He has accused the government of being riddled with them, the Assembly of being dominated by them, the press of being owned by them. None of this, unfortunately, seems ridiculous to the average man. He knows all too well what selfish men can do to Earth's resources. He knows what happened to Earth's oil during the Time of Troubles, for instance, and the way topsoil was ruined. "When a fanner experiences a drought, he doesn't care that the amount of water lost in space flight isn't a droplet in a fog as far as Earth's overall water supply is concerned. Hilder has given him something to blame and that's the strongest possible consolation for disaster. He isn't going to give that up for a diet of figures."

The City was the acme of efficiency, but it made demands of its inhabitants. It asked them to live in a tight routine and order their lives under a strict and scientific control.

Where did the substance of the universe come from? . . If 0 equals ( + 1) + (-1),
then something which is 0 might just as well become + 1 and -1. Perhaps in an
infinite sea of nothingness, globs of positive and negative energy in equal-sized pairs
are constantly forming, and after passing through evolutionary changes, combining
once more and vanishing. We are in one of these globs between nothing and nothing
and wondering about it.