43 Iconic Science Fiction Quotes

Science fiction has long served as a vessel for exploring the depths of human imagination, inspiring awe and wonder with visions of the future, distant worlds, and the possibilities that lie beyond our current understanding. Through iconic quotes, sci-fi writers and filmmakers have captured the essence of dreams, fears, and the infinite potential of the universe. In this collection, we delve into the top 43 iconic science fiction quotes, each offering a glimpse into the minds of visionary creators and the narratives that have left an indelible mark on both popular culture and the realm of speculative thought. Whether you are a lifelong aficionado or a newcomer to the genre, these words resonate with the curiosity and innovation that define the spirit of science fiction.

1. “May the gods ignore you.” - Lynda Williams

2. “..the happy hum of humanity.” - Arthur C. Clarke

3. “When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.” - Frank Herbert

4. “You can dance. You can make me laugh.You've got x-ray eyes. You know how to sing. You're a diplomat. You've got it all. Everybody loves you. You can charm the birds out of the sky, But I, I've got one thing. You always know just what to say And when to go, But I've got one thing. You can see in the dark, But I've got one thing: I loved you better. Last night I woke up,Saw this angel. He flew in my window. And he said, Girl, pretty proud of yourself, huh?" And I looked around and said, Who me?" And he said, "The higher you fly, the faster you fall."He said, "Send it up. Watch it rise. See it fall, Gravity's rainbow. Send it up. Watch it rise. See it fall, Gravity's Angel.” - Laurie Anderson

5. “She paused and saw him tense in expectation. He wouldn’t like to hear this, but better from her than one of the others. “You aren’t the only pilot I have in my service. And you aren’t the only person with a dark past, though the illegal things that you did, you were forced to do by the Core. But I will tell you what I’ve told the others. This is your last chance. You screw up with me and you get shipped up river. I don’t offer second chances—I offer last chances.”Nope, he didn’t like it. She saw the hand not holding the bottle of beer curl into a fist.Sin and Del, from Sunscapes Trilogy, Book 1: Last Chance” - Michelle O'Leary

6. “Thus, we must realize that October 21, 2011 will be the final day of this earth’s existence.” - Harold Camping

7. “You are so... 11:59” - Scott Westerfeld

8. “I think He made one law of that kind in order that there might be obedience. In all these other matters what you call obeying Him is but doing what seems good in your own eyes also. Is love content with that?” - C.S. Lewis

9. “If privacy had a gravestone it might read: 'Don't Worry. This Was for Your Own Good.” - John Twelve Hawks

10. “The longest and most destructive party ever held is now into its fourth generation and still no one shows any signs of leaving. Somebody did once look at his watch, but that was eleven years ago now, and there has been no follow up.” - Douglas Adams

11. “It was all I could do to keep from lunging across the table and pressing my shuttering lips against his burning flesh. My palms were sweating profusely causing me to have to wipe them against my jeans under the table. Those last few seconds had felt like a lifetime in pause.” - Jennifer L. Brown

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

13. “The future is unwritten. there are best case scenarios. There are worst-case scenarios. both of them are great fun to write about if you' re a science fiction novelist, but neither of them ever happens in the real world. What happens in the real world is always a sideways-case scenario. World-changing marvels to us, are only wallpaper to our children.” - Bruce Sterling

14. “And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before--and thus was the Empire forged.” - Douglas Adams

15. “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

16. “Meanwhile here I am- Earthborn woman, a mere barbaric maula, geting deeper into Imperial Space with each passing light second. I should be trembling with fear, I suppouse. No. Let the Emperor tremble. Laylah is here!” - Robert Silverberg

17. “Knowing all the languages in the world could help you to really understand all the jokes you can hear... from my future Kids' Funny Business.” - Ivan Stoikov - Allan Bard

18. “Arkady looked at the other man. he felt that he was actually seeing him as a physical being for the first time.....He tried to imagine that body with Bella, with any woman, and found the idea...not repulsive exactly, but incomprehensible. How would it work exactly? And how would either of them, knowing nothing of their lover's body, needs and desires, ever be able to satisfy the other?” - Chris Moriarty

19. “If I program ’ware with an Anglo-Ubiq word and play it, you understand it,” Scile said. “If I do the same with a word in Language, and play it to an Ariekes, I understand it, but to them it means nothing, because it’s only sound, and that’s not where the meaning lives. It needs a mind behind it.” - China Miéville

20. “Thomas jabbed a thumb over his shoulder and raised his eyebrows."You met our new friend?" Miho responded, a smirk flashing across his face. "Real piece of work, this guy. I gotta get me one of those shuck suits. Fancy stuff.""Am I awake?" Thomas asked."You're awake. Now eat—you look horrible. Almost as bad as Rat Man over there, reading his book.” - James Dashner

21. “There's no real objection to escapism, in the right places... We all want to escape occasionally. But science fiction is often very far from escapism, in fact you might say that science fiction is escape into reality... It's a fiction which does concern itself with real issues: the origin of man; our future. In fact I can't think of any form of literature which is more concerned with real issues, reality.” - Arthur C. Clarke

22. “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

23. “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

24. “A recent survey of 2,000 male graduates of Harvard Business Schoolfound that penis length & IQ were equally good predictors of annualincome. -- from "Eugene” - Greg Egan

25. “And so Discovery drove on toward Saturn, as often as not pulsating with the cool music of the harpsichord, the frozen thoughts of a brain that had been dust for twice a hundred years.” - Arthur C. Clarke

26. “By the standards of a tourist strolling past looking for a quick lunch, the place was a dive. The sign on the window was small and easy to miss, and the antique feel of the place wasn't the prepackaged, old-shit-on-the-wall nostalgia that came with so many chain restaurants. The cafe was just old, and everything about it said old. But Jon liked it that way, if only because it kept the tourists away and spared him from hearing imported ignorance when there was plenty of local ignorance to go around.” - Scott B. Pruden

27. “I have zero respect for knowledge, that’s what computers are for. Imagination is the kicker because imagination can extrapolate, create and solve, Knowledge is just facts and shit. Mostly irrelevant.”Kego O'Grady in The Navigator By Steve Merrick” - Steve Merrick

28. “Si los seres humanos no dejan de hacer ejercicio con los labios, su cerebro empieza a funcionar.” - Douglas Adams

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

30. “We believed we were safe. That was the big fantasy.” - John Marsden

31. “Science fiction [is] the kind of writing that prepares us for the necessary mutations brought about in society from an ever changing technological world and as a result. The mainstream hasn’t excluded SF; the mainstream has excluded itself. No one told Jules Verne he was a science fiction writer, but he invented the 20th century.” - Walter Mosley

32. “Here lies one from a distant star, but the soil is not alien to him, for in death he belongs to the universe.” - Clifford D. Simak

33. “As one climbs up the ladders in society, one starts feeling more and more like an owner, less like a member of it.” - B. Barmanbek

34. “That year the Ribeiro's daffodils seeded early and they seeded cockroaches. Now, ecologically speaking, even a cockroach has its place -- but these suckers bit. That didn't sound Earth-authentic to me. Not that I care, mind you, all I ask is useful. I wasn't betting on that either.” - Janet Kagan

35. “In a sense who you are has always been a story that you told to yourself. Now your self is a story that you tell to others.” - Geoff Ryman

36. “I myself have dreamed up a structure intermediate between Dyson spheres and planets. Build a ring 93 million miles in radius - one Earth orbit - around the sun. If we have the mass of Jupiter to work with, and if we make it a thousand miles wide, we get a thickness of about a thousand feet for the base.And it has advantages. The Ringworld will be much sturdier than a Dyson sphere. We can spin it on its axis for gravity. A rotation speed of 770 m/s will give us a gravity of one Earth normal. We wouldn't even need to roof it over. Place walls one thousand miles high at each edge, facing the sun. Very little air will leak over the edges.Lord knows the thing is roomy enough. With three million times the surface area of the Earth, it will be some time before anyone complains of the crowding.” - Larry Niven

37. “But eggshells were made to be broken, and slamming into a 100-story skyscraper at the speed of light would likely do the deed.” - Maureen A. Miller

38. “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

39. “Sometimes people say that we're living in the future, and time's up for science fiction, but I think that never will be, because science fiction really isn't about the future. It's about change and present-day concerns” - Stephen Baxter

40. “To try is to invite uncertainty. Where confidence goes, success usually follows.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

41. “You must learn to control your dreams or your dreams will forever control you.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

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

43. “The Walker towered over him like a half-built skyscraper with a bad attitude. Its bulbous silver head was home to so many weapons that Nick couldn't even count them. He couldn't even name half of them.” - Peter James West