'You'll grant that in order to live onto the world in which you were born, and which you love, you have to keep it livable.'

'The Mersey class is an expendable ship. They were built for one job, to haul colonists and equipment out here.'

'Never doubt the engineer's private computation.'

'Anybody can make money when things are going good. It takes brains to make it in hard times.'

'It's only what you do to other people that's important. How you feel about it is interesting, but not fundamentally important.'

'When things get bad, everybody wants to pass the buck to the Federation.'

'There's a tramp coming in. I think we can sell her ships.'

'I think you're underestimating the dangers. There's nothing more treacherous than a planet.'

'If it hadn't been for a bad case of spacesickness, I wouldn't have married her mother.'

The Cosmic Computer