“Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of all Utopias—boredom.”

“. . . the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull.”

“They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of omnipotence; their experiments did not always succeed.”

“No utopia can ever give satisfaction to everyone, all the time. As their material conditions improve, men raise their sights and become discontented with power and possessions that once would have seemed beyond their wildest dreams. And even when the external world has granted all it can, there still remain the searchings of the mind and the longings of the heart.”

“The confrontation lasted about five minutes; then the display died out as quickly as it had begun, and everyone drank his fill of the muddy water. Honor had been satisfied; each group had staked its claim to its own territory.”

“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.”

“I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here.”