“Now I understand,” said the last man.”

“I will not be afraid because I understand ... And understanding is happiness.”

“Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.”

“So this, thought Jan, with a resignation that lay beyond all sadness, was the end of man. It was an end that no prophet had foreseen – an end that repudiated optimism and pessimism alike.Yet it was fitting: it had the sublime inevitability of a great work of art. Jan had glimpsed the universe in all its immensity, and knew now that it was no place for man. He realized at last how vain, in the ultimate analysis, had been the dream that lured him to the stars.For the road to the stars was a road that forked in two directions, and neither led to a goal that took any account of human hopes or fears.”

“Now I'm a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.”

“Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.”

“It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.”