James Blish

“The function of an ideal is not to be realized, but to serve as a guide.”

“The universe is not on man's side. It is not on the side of any living thing... It is on the side of the Second Law of Thermodynamics alone.”

“Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns.”

“It is not necessary for all men to be great in action. The greatest men of all are those who have done no tangible thing at all.”

“To be a catalyst is the ambition of the uncreative.”

“No belief is really blind; it is a matter of choice.”

“The only real sin is to be unconscious.”

“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.”

“The future is a thing that you make. It is not a thing that happens to you.”

“Survival is the least of all virtues. It is a condition, not a quality.”

“There is no such thing as a harmless truth.”

“The price of freedom is the capacity to make mistakes.”

“We are all of us, in our own way, monsters.”

“A praying man is a desperate man.”

“A city is not a place. A city is a people.”