“Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.”

“A sacred picture of Saint Anthony alone is one vertical, unwavering band of light. If a cockroach were near him, or a cocktail waitress, the picture would be two such bands of light. Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is just dead machinery.”

“Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.And all music is.”

“Future civilizations - better civilizations than this one - are going to judge all men by the extent to which they've been artists. You and I, if some future archaeologist finds our works miraculously preserved in some city dump, will be judged by the quality of our creations. Nothing else about us will matter.”

“I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.”

“I love you sons of bitches. You’re all I read any more. You're the only ones who’ll talk all about the really terrific changes going on, the only ones crazy enough to know that life is a space voyage, and not a short one, either, but one that’ll last for billions of years. You’re the only ones with guts enough to really care about the future, who really notice what machines do to us, what wars do to us, what cities do to us, what big, simple ideas do to us, what tremendous misunderstanding, mistakes, accidents, catastrophes do to us. You're the only ones zany enough to agonize over time and distance without limit, over mysteries that will never die, over the fact that we are right now determining whether the space voyage for the next billion years or so is going to be Heaven or Hell.”

“Let there be nothing harmonious about our children's playthings, lest they grow up expecting peace and order, and be eaten alive.”