"Fifty years," I hackneyed, "is a long time." "Not when you're looking back at them," she said. "You wonder how they vanished so quickly." - Isaac Asimov

Why, he wondered, did so many people spend their lives not trying to find answers to questions - not even thinking of questions to begin with? Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?

the satisfied awe that marks the triumph of someone who has been hovering at the edge of an inferiority complex for three years.

Asimov: I don't know of any science fiction writer who really attempts to be a prophet. Such authors accomplish their tasks not by being correct in their predictions, necessarily, but merely by hammering home—in story after story—the notion that life is going to be different.