Quotes from Ben Bova

Once they discovered our solar-powered city, tucked high in the Sierra Oriental, I knew that the end was near. Stupidly, they attacked us, like a wild barbarian horde. We slaughtered them with laser beams and heat-seeking bullets. Instead of driving them away, that only whetted their appetite.

It is the duty of God's disciples to strike you dead

Isaac Newton had discovered that for every action there is an opposite reaction. Popular wisdom declared that every dark cloud has a silver lining.

the old joke about parachutes: If it doesn't work, bring it back and we'll give you a new one.

It wasn't Islamic fundamentalists. We have our own fanatics right here at home.

If the world should stop revolving, spinning slowly down to dust "I'd spend the end with you, "And when the world was through "Then one by one the stars would all go out, "Then you and I would simply fly away.

You believe in Darwinian evolution.

The people who set off the bombs think it does. They think they're doing God's work." "That's a perversion of everything that Christianity stands for.

Grant was torn loose from his foot restraints and went sailing across the bridge, optic fibers popping loose.

How can a priest be a scientist?

Work is the curse of the drinking man

Krishna: "The wise grieve not for those who live; and they grieve not for those who die—for life and death shall pass away.

You scared the wits out of everyone, collapsing like that." "How should I have collapsed?" I joked.

She's a social worker." What else? Dan quipped to himself, thinking of the vast sea of unemployed and unemployable Californians. Half the state stood in welfare lines while the other half stood behind the desks ministering to them. Maybe they take turns at it, he thought, one week in line and one week running the system

A test. Other races on other worlds have tried it and failed. Wiped themselves out. Overpopulated to the point of total ecological collapse. Destroyed themselves in wars. We've got to make sure that the human race discovers nanotechnology in the right way and develops it wisely, usefully. Not for power. Not for weapons. Humanely. Then we'll be ready to meet the other races that have succeeded, that have passed this test and become truly intelligent, truly adult.

There are more than three hundred trillion cells in the human body. Counting ten cells per second, it would take more than a million years to count them all.

You must love your neighbor as yourself, and you must love yourself as you love your God. Otherwise you get bureaucrats and swindlers and opinion polls and computer-generated graphs in place of helping the needy. Cold impersonal bureaucracies do not solve problems.

Leading her to the table, Rick poured a glass of champagne for her. As they touched glasses, he smiled and said, "Here's looking at you, kid." Yvonne positively glowed.

If Grant hadn't been hanging on he would have been flung across the bridge again.

We must have a Believer. If we have a scientist, then we must have a Believer, in the interests of fairness and balance.

blowing sparks and broken pieces across the bridge.

It should be for you a sacred day when one of your people dies. You must then keep his soul as I shall teach you…for if this soul is kept, it will increase in you your concern and love for your neighbor.

Hard SF is the literature of change, the genre that examines the implications—both beneficial and dangerous—of new sciences and technologies.

Infernal world! And thou, profoundest Hell, Receive thy new possessor-one who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.