Rama II

In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say 'I have learned' and 'I have loved,' you will also be able to say 'I have been happy.

It's a shame that we humans are never able to pull in the same direction . . . [n]ot even when confronted by infinity.

Could we go into your room?" she asked. "I knew it. I knew it," he said, spinning around and sliding quickly toward his door. "It's finally happend, just like in dreams. An intelligent, beautiful woman is going to declare her undying affection

Because each of us is the sum of all we have ever experienced. Only the very young have a clean slate.

All bureaucracies are the same. They drain the life out of the truly creative people and develop mindless paper-pushers as their critical mass.

if it really was brilliant I’d have thought of it already.

The fax machine now allows us to exchange ideas almost in real time; it’s far more convenient than the Electronic Mail

life was not a joyride at an amusement park. It was a deadly serious affair and only through a combination of solid values, self-control, and a steady commitment to a worthwhile goal was there a chance to achieve happiness.

Otto would pull the trigger at the slightest provocation and you, Michael, would agonize aver its morality even if your life were threatened. I'm the tiebreaker.

Sometimes when I’m in a bookstore or a library, I am overwhelmed by all the things that I do not know. Then I am seized by a powerful desire to read all the books, one by one.

Do we use models to help us find the truth? Or do we know the truth first, and then develop the mathematics to explain it?

Michael O'Toole had no difficulty recognizing which questions in life should be answered by physics and which ones by religion.

What had been a perceived threat, a lien in a sense on future human behavior, was quickly reduced to a historical curiosity.

Dr. Brown considered all engineers to be nothing more than glorified carpenters and plumbers.

She was certain that it was wise to prevent Wilson and Brown from working closely together during sorties inside Rama. Nicole chastised herself for not having raised the issue with Borzov on her own. She realized that her mission portfolio included mental health as well, but somehow she had difficulty thinking of herself as the crew psychiatrist. I avoid it because it’s not an objective process, she thought. We have no sensors yet to measure good or bad mental health.

forty-one was a “very special number, the initial integer in the longest continuous string of quadratic primes.

dying in an exciting situation is much better than living in a boring one.

In my life I have found two things of priceless worth – learning and loving. Nothing else – not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake – can possibly have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say ‘I have learned’ and ‘I have loved,’ you will also be able to say ‘I have been happy.

But dying in an exciting situation is much better than living in a boring one.

Their movement caused a slight indentation in the loamy soil.

There was an almost total breakdown in the standard institutions of modern civilization, creating a phantasmagoric life for everyone in the world except the privileged few in their protected retreats.

It’s a shame that we humans are never able to pull in the same direction, Nicole said to herself. Not even when confronted by infinity.

In my life I have found two things of priceless worth—learning and loving. Nothing else—not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake—can possibly have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say ‘I have learned’ and ‘I have loved,’ you will also be able to say ‘I have been happy.

To my precious daughter Nicole, and all the young people of the world, I offer one simple insight. In my life I have found two things of priceless worth—learning and loving. Nothing else—not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake—can possibly have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say ‘I have learned’ and ‘I have loved,’ you will also be able to say ‘I have been happy.

Summer 2161: Brown, eleven, enrolled in Camp Longhorn by father over strenuous objections of mother. Typical outdoor summer camp in hill country of Texas

That the Raman spaceship was probably more intelligent than any living creatures on Earth

That way I put off going home until the last possible moment. I dreaded being around my father…. I never knew what he would do— “But you don’t want to hear this,” Richard interrupted himself suddenly, “everyone has memories of childhood pain. We should talk about something else.