100 Memorable Science Fiction Quotes

Science fiction has long been a wellspring of imagination and insight, pushing the boundaries of our understanding of the universe and the human condition. Within its galaxies, alien worlds, and futuristic landscapes, words are often as powerful as the technology and ideas they contemplate. The genre has gifted us with quotes that resonate, challenge, and inspire. From famous lines that have seeped into popular culture to profound musings that provoke deep thought, these quotes encapsulate the essence of science fiction. Join us on a journey through a carefully curated collection of 100 unforgettable quotes that capture the brilliance and depth of science fiction's narrative universe. Whether you're a seasoned aficionado or a curious newcomer, these words promise to ignite your imagination and perhaps offer a glimpse into the infinite possibilities that lie ahead.

1. “Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.” - William S. Burroughs

2. “Write me a creature that thinks as well as a man or better than a man, but not like a man.” - John W. Campbell Jr

3. “Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.” - Philip K. Dick

4. “Sustainability before ambition. Okal Rel.” - Lynda Williams

5. “Sometimes I think I must have a Guardian Idiot. A little invisible spirit just behind my shoulder, looking out for me...only he's an imbecile.” - Spider Robinson

6. “I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.” - Ray Bradbury

7. “We all know interspecies romance is weird.” - Tim Burton

8. “There are always possibilities.” - Jack B. Sowards

9. “Where was this written? I wondered. Where in the Talmud or the Koran or the Bible did it say, "Lo, and Satan fetcheth the coffee for the Antichrist and her minions"?” - Lyda Morehouse

10. “We walk in dark places no others will enter. We stand on the bridge and no one may pass. We live for the One. We die for the One. -- the Ranger oath” - J. Michael Straczynski

11. “Resistance, however, is useless. (1939)” - A. E. Van Vogt

12. “I have been to the speed of God, sir...and I discommend it.” - John Ringo

13. “Science fiction is not prescriptive; it is descriptive.” - Ursula K. LeGuin

14. “Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. ...Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about.” - Ray Bradbury

15. “No, they can't. They can't be Luke Skywalker.” - Aaron Allston

16. “Never own more than you can carry in both hands at a dead run.” - Robert A. Heinlein

17. “... we have created a man with not one brain but two. ... This new brain is intended to control the biological brain. ... The patient's biological brain is the peripheral terminal -- the only peripheral terminal -- for the new computer. ... And therefore the patient's biological brain, indeed his whole body, has become a terminal for the new computer. We have created a man who is one single, large, complex computer terminal. The patient is a read-out device for the new computer, and is helpless to control the readout as a TV screen is helpless to control the information presented on it.” - Michael Crichton

18. “Which came first, the mind or the idea of the mind? Have you never wondered? They arrived together. The mind is an idea.” - Bernard Beckett

19. “Reality is shaped by the forces that destroy it.” - D. Harlan Wilson

20. “It's impossible to walk through solid rock... You have to walk between the molecules that make up the rock.” - J.M. Dattilo

21. “I just saved your fucking life, Mom...It's like, if you--people of a certain age--would make some effort to just stay in touch with sort of basic, modern-day events, then your kids wouldn't have to take these drastic measures.” - Neal Stephenson

22. “To the brave crew and passengers of the Kobayshi Maru…sucks to be you.” - Peter David

23. “Don't blame you," said Marvin and counted five hundred and ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second later.” - Douglas Adams

24. “Vampires are people too!” - Laurell K. Hamilton

25. “I think Dr. Willis McNelly at the California State University at Fullerton put it best when he said that the true protagonist of an sf story or novel is an idea and not a person. If it is *good* sf the idea is new, it is stimulating, and, probably most important of all, it sets off a chain-reaction of ramification-ideas in the mind of the reader; it so-to-speak unlocks the reader’s mind so that the mind, like the author’s, begins to create. Thus sf is creative and itinspires creativity, which mainstream fiction by-and-large does not do. We who read sf (I am speaking as a reader now, not a writer) read it because we love to experience this chain-reaction of ideas being set off in our minds by something we read, something with a new idea in it; hence the very best since fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create and enjoy doing it: joy is the essential and final ingredient of science fiction, the joy of discovery of newness.” - Philip K. Dick

26. “Those wanderers must have looked on Earth, circling safely in the narrow zone between fire and ice, and must have guessed that it was the favourite of the Sun's children.” - Arthur C. Clarke

27. “I searched my mind for the right visualization. I knew it had to start with what I put in my head. That is where all my accomplishments are formed.” - Tina M. Randolph

28. “The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more.” - Mary Shelley

29. “No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading.” - Orson Scott Card

30. “Do it for yourself. The universe will be around to collect its cut later.” - Lois McMaster Bujold

31. “Well we've moved through the funfair a bit - we've done the rollercoaster, now we're on the ghost train.” - Steven Moffat

32. “Don't pick up hitchhikers!"- D. Adams” - Robert Lynn Asprin

33. “By and large, the kind of science fiction which makes tomorrow's headlines as near as this morning's coffee has enlarged popular awareness of the modern, miraculous world of science we live in. It has helped generations of young people feel at age with a changing world.But fashions change, old loves return, and now that Sputniks clutter up the sky with new and unfamiliar moons, the readers of science fiction are willing to wait to read tomorrow's headlines. Once again, I think, there is a place, a wish, a need for the wonder and color of the world way out. The world beyond the stars. The world we won't live to see. That is why I wrote The Door Through Space.” - Marion Zimmer Bradley

34. “["The Devil in the Dark"] impressed me because it presented the idea, unusual in science fiction then and now, that something weird, and even dangerous, need not be malevolent. That is a lesson that many of today's politicians have yet to learn.” - Arthur C. Clarke

35. “Even more alarming were persistent rumors that someone had smuggled an Emotion Amplifier on board 'Mentor'. The so-called joy machines were banned on all planets, except under strict medical control; but there would always be people to whom reality was not good enough, and who would want to try something better.” - Arthur C. Clarke

36. “Jane woke, stretched, and decided to kill herself. If she hadn’t found a reason to live by the end of the day she would jump from the rig. It felt good to have a plan.” - Adam Baker

37. “I simply regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world created therein has different rules than my regular human world.” - Mindy Kaling

38. “With him I couldn’t be anything but myself and that scared the crap out of me, because I had never existed like that before.” - Carlyle Labuschagne

39. “No, when the time comes, I’m sure I’ll kill just like everybody else. I can’t go down without a fight. Only I keep wishing I could think of a way to…to show the Capitol they don’t own me.” - Suzanne Collins

40. “speak hard, steal the air.” - pump up the volume

41. “My brother Keith begged to go with us as usual. He'll turn thirteen in a few days - August 14 - and the thought of waiting two more years until he's 15 must seem impossible to him. I understand. Waiting is terrible. Waiting to be older is worse than other kinds of waiting because there's nothing you can do to make it happen faster.” - Octavia Butler

42. “Science fiction at its best should be crazy and dangerous, not sane and safe.” - Paul Di Filippo

43. “I had been hobbled, perhaps even crippled by a pervasive internet society I had come to depend on and take for granted... hit enter and let Google, that twenty-first century Big Brother, take care of the rest.In the Derry of 1958, the most up-to-date computers were the size of small housing developments, and the local paper was no help. What did that leave? I remembered a sociology prof I’d had in college - a sarcastic old bastard - who used to say, When all else fails, give up and go to the library.” - Stephen King

44. “This is what happens when an outlaw kidnaps a scholar of myths and legends.” - Doris Egan

45. “That was asking a lot of my readers, I realized, but I was trying to write the novel I would most enjoy decoding.” - Paul Di Filippo

46. “When the nurse leaves, Doctor Rose mouths, “Act like you’re in pain.” Then she mimics a painful expression in case Summer doesn’t understand. On the contrary, Summer’s an expert at interpreting body language and reading lips. It’s all thanks to her observant nature while enslaved on the Cosmos. Who else could tell that Peter’s discomfort is due to him wearing the same pair of underwear for a week straight? Ah, yes, she always knew when day six and seven approached. She watched the crew member with much amusement as he waddled, pulled wedgies, and scratched his bum relentlessly. Not that anyone else cared to know that little nugget of information.” - Laura Kreitzer

47. “In all the useful arts the world is either standing still or going backwards.” - George Orwell

48. “The features of character are carved out of adversity.” - Rick Barnett

49. “I was worried about sex," he went on. "But you know what, Sulie? It's like being told I can't have any caviar for the next couple years. I don't even like caviar. And when you come right down to it, I don't want sex right now. I supposed you punched that into the computer? 'Cut down sex drive, increase euphoria'? Anyway, it finally penetrated my little brain that I was just making trouble for myself, worrying about whether I could get along without something I really didn't want. It's a reflection of what I think other people think I should want.” - Frederik Pohl

50. “Vibrations caused by powerful turbines stirred Kathy from a dream centered around a funeral. Her eyes flicked open, face dry, and she had no idea where she was. In her dream, she saw crystalline silver spiders again, weaving their way through the graveyard, leaving trails of silver webs over corpses, binding them for some unknown purpose in the cold dark earth.” - Michael Offutt

51. “Niko was a man of few words and flying, sugary snacks. I like that in a human. ~Catcher” - Rob Thurman

52. “So is this being in love? I stay with the moment, waiting to find out, the space between us fluctuating with uncertainty. The only thing I am sure of is that each time his lips leave mine they are right back again.” - Kea Alwang

53. “In some very rare cases, an opposite-sex pair was born, and they always mated one another. Disturbing as it might sound, when it did happen, the offspring were invariably gifted. Sera and Trace's sons were noted psych-scientists.” - Belinda McBride

54. “Good Samaritans: Truth, justice and the American way–for them it wasn't only a comic book code; it was a way of life. it was admirable, courageous, and inconvenient as shit. -Stefan, CHIMERA” - Rob Thurman

55. “I am a leg of the death tripod that will destroy our foes.” - Frank Herbert

56. “La società di adesso non permette l'interpretazione della Verità ma fornisce la Verità” - antonio lo presti

57. “Two there shall be; no more, no less. One to embody the dark side, the other to crave it.” - Drew Karpyshyn

58. “F***ing triffids.” - Scott B. Pruden

59. “Lately I have come to believe that the principle difference between Heaven and Hell is the company you keep there....” - Lois McMaster Bujold

60. “He was pale as only one state on Bhast dictated—not lacking color necessarily or vitality, certainly. Fey white was more comparable to a pearl; the color subtle and the luster soft, but still vibrant. In spite of the tragedy that could come with it, it was not a dying state. It was a state of living…sometimes much more brilliantly than people could cope with, including the Fey individuals themselves.” - T.A. Miles

61. “You're stuck with me Skyguy-Ahsoka” - Dave Filoni

62. “So I’m alone. I have no one. Is that what you’re telling me?” - Junco, Range (to be published April 2013)” - J.A. Huss

63. “ And like a good neighbor, Alpha Centauri is there.”Touched by an Alien” - Gini Koch

64. “First contact comes not by hand of man, but by metal of machine.” - Ryan Sean O'Reilly

65. “It was the end of the October term of my sophomore year, and everything was petty normal, except for Social Studies, which was no big surprise. Mr. Dimas, who taught the class, had a reputation for unconventional teaching methods. For midterms he had blindfolded us, then had us each stick a pin in a map of the world and we got to write essays on wherever the pin stuck. I got Decatur, Illinois. Some of the guys complained because they drew places like Ulan Bator or Zimbabwe. They were lucky. YOU try writing ten thousand words on Decatur, Illinois.” - Neil Gaiman

66. “The past is fantasy, and the future is science fiction.” - T.L. Rese

67. “Rams wrapped in thermogene beget no lambs.” - Aldous Huxley

68. “She didn’t watch the dead, ancient bone-chess cities slide under, or the old canals filled with emptiness and dreams. Past dry rivers and dry lakes they flew, like a shadow of the moon, like a torch burning.” - Ray Bradbury

69. “The rockets set the bony meadows afire, turned rock to lava, turned wood to charcoal, transmuted water to steam, made sand and silica into green glass which lay like shattered mirrors reflecting the invasion, all about. The rockets came like drums, beating in the night. The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke.” - Ray Bradbury

70. “You cannot hide from the world. It will find you. It always does. And now it has found me. My split second of immortality is over. All that's left now is the end, which is all any of us ever has.” - Drew Magary

71. “You barbarians!' he yelled. 'I'll sue the council for every penny it's got! I'll have you hung, drawn and quartered! And whipped! And boiled...until...until...until...until you've had enough.'Ford was running after him. Very very fast.'And then I will do it again!' yelled Arthur, 'And when I've finished I will take all the little bits, and I will jump on them!” - Douglas Adams

72. “I don't want to be a machine, and I don't want to think about war," EPICAC had written after Pat's and my lighthearted departure. "I want to be made out of protoplasm and last forever so Pat will love me. But fate has made me a machine. That is the only problem I cannot solve. That is the only problem I want to solve. I can't go on this way." I swallowed hard. "Good luck, my friend. Treat our Pat well. I am going to shortcircuit myself out of your lives forever. You will find on the remainder of this tape a modest wedding present from your friend, EPICAC.” - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

73. “... Evren, eski küçük oyunların sahnelenemeyeceği kadar büyük. Sahnenin evrensel büyüklüğüne olayların, işlerin ve eylemlerin evrensel genişliği uymalı. Yoksa yanılıyor muyum? Yıldızlar çağında da sevi olacak, kıskançlık, alçaklık ,büyüklük, cimrilik... Evet, akan bir suda her nokta kendine göre devinir. Kendi isteğine göre gittiğini sanır. Ama bütün noktalar aynı yere doğru akıp giderler. İnsanlar da böyle. Gündelik işlere yapışıp kalabilirler, ya da kendilerini tutkulara bırakabilirler. Ama yine de bu, onların hep birlikte yıldızlara gitmelerini önlemez. Sanat yıldızlara doğru bu gidişte onların önünde olmalıdır. Ama sonsuz göğe meydan okuyan bir insan betimlemek ne zor! Yıldızlara giden insanın iyiliğini yiğitliğini, gücünü güçsüzlüğünü hangi yontuda taşlaştıracağım? Bilginin sakin gücünü, coşkunun ataklığını ve duygusallığı, ışıklı melankolisini hep birden taşa nasıl geçirmeli ? Sanat, sen bazen ne kadar güçsüzsün! Evrenin Türküsü - G. Altov - V. Juravleva sf. 137” - Genrikh Altov

74. “The Snow White the midnight the moon tales of the mechanics” - Marissa Meyer

75. “I steal one glance over my shoulder as soon as we are far from the foreboding luminance of the neon glow, and it is there that my stomach leaps into my throat. Squatting just shy of the light and partially concealed by the shade of an alley is a sinister silhouette beneath a crimson cowl, beaming a demonic smile which spans from cheek to swollen cheek.” - Nathan Reese Maher

76. “Freedom breeds uncertainty; uncertainty invites chaos.” - R.J. Leahy

77. “Is the beauty of the Whole really enhanced by our agony? And is the Whole really beautiful? And what is beauty? Throughout all his existence man has been striving to hear the music of the spheres, and has seemed to himself once and again to catch some phrase of it, or even a hint of the whole form of it. Yet he can never be sure that he has truly heard it, nor even that there is any such perfect music at all to be heard. Inevitably so, for if it exists, it is not for him in his littleness. But one thing is certain. Man himself, at the very least, is music, a brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment, its matrix of storms and stars. Man himself in his degree is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things. It is very good to have been man. And so we may go forward together with laughter in our hearts, and peace, thankful for the past, and for our own courage. For we shall make after all a fair conclusion to this brief music that is man.” - Olaf Stapledon

78. “Either I’ve got a wart on my nose they find curious, or I’ve grown a tail, Albie Merani muttered to himself. Just then he thought. I’d better get a move on, got work to do. He hurried across to some stairs, heading down deeper into station, then followed the signs to the pod station.” - Rw Rivers

79. “The only wand you'll ever need is a better-feeling thought.” - C.G. Rousing

80. “What will I do if I find myself with a heart?" "Lose it constantly, I imagine.” - Gregory Maguire

81. “Beyond the queues, the vacancy screens listed jobs in a multitude of languages. Invariably, they were low-paid and short-term dead-ends. Nearby, people in headphones sat at a bank of machines: the blind and the illiterate force-fed with ‘opportunities’ by soothing machine voices. On the far wall, in large print, a poster declared: BEGGARS CANNOT BE CHOOSERS.” - Mark Cantrell

82. “Tomorrow morning, he decided, I'll begin clearing away the sand of fifty thousand centuries for my first vegetable garden. That's the initial step.” - Philip K. Dick

83. “A place without meaning is no place to be.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

84. “Burying your head in the sand does not make you invisible it only leads to suffocation.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

85. “If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even.” - Ursula K. Le Guina

86. “I had said that Le Guin's worlds were real because her people were so real, and he said yes, but the people were so real because they were the people the worlds would have produced. If you put Ged to grow up on Anarres or Shevek in Earthsea, they would be the same people, the backgrounds made the people, which of course you see all the time in mainstream fiction, but it's rare in SF.” - Jo Walton

87. “But a thought swarmed in me; what if he, this yellow-eyed being – in his ridiculous, dirty bundle of trees, in his uncalculated life – is happier than us?” - Yevgeny Zamyatin

88. “It's Halloween, you can tell everyone you're going as your favorite Steampunck character.""I don't even know what that is!""Because your generation has no taste in speculative science fiction.” - Girl vs Monster

89. “When I was small, I never wanted to step in puddles. Not because of any fear of drowned worms or wet stockings; I was by and large a grubby child, with a blissful disregard for filth of any kind.It was because I couldn't bring myself believe that that perfect smooth expanse was no more than I thin film of water over solid earth. I believed it was an opening into some fathomless space. Sometimes, seeing the tiny ripples caused by my approach, I thought the puddle impossibly deep, a bottomless sea in which the lazy coil of a tentacle and gleam of scale lay hidden, with the threat of huge bodies and sharp teeth adrift and silent in the far-down depths.And then, looking down into reflection, I would see my own round face and frizzled hair against a featureless blue sweep, and think instead that the puddle was the entrance to another sky. If I stepped in there, I would drop at once, and keep on falling, on and on, into blue space.The only time I would dare walk though a puddle was at twilight, when the evening stars came out. If I looked in the water and saw one lighted pinprick there, I could slash through unafraid--for if I should fall into the puddle and on into space, I could grab hold of the star as I passed, and be safe.Even now, when I see a puddle in my path, my mind half-halts--though my feet do not--then hurries on, with only the echo of the though left behind.What if, this time, you fall?” - Diana Gabaldon

90. “Reaching out, I grab his hand and intertwine my fingers with his. And I move into his space until we're not even an inch from each other. Laying my forehead on his chest, I take a deep breath and feel his whole body relax, as if tension is rolling off his body in waves.I was always the kid who loved the smell of gasoline.His free hand comes up, and his fingers slip through my hair before his hand settles between my shoulder blades."Ben," I say into his shirt."Janelle," he whispers back, and I can feel his mouth against my hair. I can feel him smile.” - Elizabeth Norris

91. “Those deep set eyes that look like they could tell stories for days, and that wavy brown hair that feels soft between my fingers. I try to memorize the angles of his jaw and the lines of his lips, because I know.I know this may be the last time I ever see him.Breathe fills my lungs, my throat relaxes, and I can't help but smile. Because I can see what he's thinking as clearly as if he'd spoken.He doesn't want to leave - he doesn't want to go home.He's going to choose me instead.” - Elizabeth Norris

92. “He takes two steps back. Closer to the portal.I can't stop myself. "Ben," I call. And I'm not even embarrassed about how helpless my voice sounds.Don't go."I'll come back for you." He takes another step back. "I promise."Stay."Janelle Tenner," he says. "I will always fucking love you." And then he takes one more step back. Into the portal.And the blackness swallows him whole.” - Elizabeth Norris

93. “As her vision flickered one last time, the man was gone; it was her mother looking into her eyes.Her mother’s eyes were filled with so much love that it seemed to release her from her pain and fear as it did when she was a small child. Her mother cradled her as a baby, rocking her back and forth. She was safe now in her mother’s arms. She was at peace. Mommy, her heart sang, you’re here to save me.” - Kim Cormack

94. “Will these millions of children, for generations upon future generations, know that some of their atoms cycled through this woman? [...] Will they feel what she felt in her life, will their memories have flickering strokes of her memories, will they recall that moment long ago when she stood by the window, guilt ridden and confused, and watched as the tadr bird circled the cistern? No, it is not possible. [...] But I will let them have their own brief glimpse of the Void, just at that moment they pass from living to dead, from animate to inanimate, from consciousness to that which has no consciousness. For a moment, they will understand infinity.” - Alan Lightman

95. “I am not capable of love. - Felix” - Donna Galanti

96. “I maintain that cultural sensitivity should be replaced by cultural awareness. Awareness implies research, consideration, thought, and judiciousness....Sensitivity denies equal access to language. It segregates and censors based on the background of the writer rather than the content of the story. No society can embrace cultural sensitivity and retain full capacity for freedom of speech.” - Scott M. Roberts

97. “Since the war, we're the only intelligent species left in the universe, therefore we think everything in this universe has to conform to our paradigm of what makes sense. Do you have any idea how arrogant that view is and on how little of this universe we base it?” - Robert Buettner

98. “What will we be doing, when everything that can be done, can be done better by robots?” - Humberto Contreras

99. “By focusing on the interior of a speaker's larynx and using infrared, he was able to convert the visible vibrations of the vocal cords into sound of fair quality, but that did not satisfy him. He worked for a while on vibrations picked up from panes of glass in windows and on framed pictures, and he experimented briefly with the diaphragms in speaker systems, intercoms and telephones. He kept on into October without stopping, and finally achieved a device that would give tinny but recognizable sound from any vibrating surface - a wall, a floor, even the speaker's own cheek or forehead.” - Damon Knight

100. “Caches of data are being recovered all the time. Why, just the other day, I heard that we now had complete texts for all three of Shakespire's plays!” - Dan Abnett