Simon Ramo quote: “Obama can't announce that man-in-space is out of date because of the political consequences… Senators and congressmen f…”

“No matter how much the space program you actually have has achieved, whether it’s first contact with aliens or trips to nearby stars, it can never have achieved as much as the space programs you can imagine would have achieved in its place, given that imaginary programs aren’t limited by issues of politics, funding, or engineering.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

Review of “Eyes of Amber”, by Joan D. Vinge (as anthologized in New Women of Wonder, edited by Pamela Sargent http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/yet-more-sf-about-women-by-women, 2015
2010s
Context: There’s a rule I used to call The Niven Rule but which I just now have decided to call the Rusting Bridges rule. It came to me after reading Niven’s “All The Bridges Rusting.” In this story, humans have by the early 21st century explored the Solar System and sent not just one but two crewed ships to Alpha Centauri … despite which the characters moan endlessly about the dire state of the space program. “Eyes of Amber” would be another example of the Rusting Bridges [Rule]: No matter how much the space program you actually have has achieved, whether it’s first contact with aliens or trips to nearby stars, it can never have achieved as much as the space programs you can imagine would have achieved in its place, given that imaginary programs aren’t limited by issues of politics, funding, or engineering.

“The only thing that scares me more than space aliens is the idea that there aren't any space aliens. We can't be the best that creation has to offer. I pray we're not all there is. If so, we're in big trouble.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

“NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Where else but in Texas would men set up to administer space?”

James Cameron (journalist) (1911–1985) British journalist

Cameron Country, broadcast on BBC TV, July 12, 1969.

“If space in infinite, how about the space inside man? Blake said that eternity opens from the center of an atom. My former terror vanished. Now I saw that I was mistaken in thinking of myself as an object in a dead landscape. I had been assuming that man is limited because his brain is limited, that only so much can be packed into the portmanteau. But the spaces of the mind are a new dimension.”

Colin Wilson book The Mind Parasites

The body is a mere wall between two infinities. Space extends to infinity outwards; the mind stretches to infinity inwards.
Source: The Mind Parasites (1967), p. 38

“You can't do everything at the same time, don't be too much in a hurry. Space out yourself, rest, understand yourself and love yourself.”

Omotola Jalade Ekeinde (1978) Nigerian actress and singer

“There's more to do to stop the bad behavior by big entities in this space because there's so much money in this space. They aren't looking out for patients like they used to.”

Greg Walden (1957) American politician

Source: Exclusive–Greg Walden: Private-Equity ‘Scare Tactics’ Will Not Stop ‘Surprise Medical Bill’ Reform https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/09/13/exclusive-greg-walden-private-equity-scare-tactics-will-not-stop-surprise-medical-bill-reform/ (13 September 2019)

“It's like the old dilemma: You can't get a job without experience, but you can't get experience because no one will give you a job.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Nine, Flying and Seeing: New Ways to Learn

“The end of man is knowledge but there's one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it would save him.”

Robert Penn Warren book All the King's Men

All the King's Men (1946)

“If space in infinite, how about the space inside man? Blake said that eternity opens from the center of an atom. My former terror vanished. Now I saw that I was mistaken in thinking of myself as an object in a dead landscape. I had been assuming that man is limited because his brain is limited, that only so much can be packed into the portmanteau. But the spaces of the mind are a new dimension. The body is a mere wall between two infinities. Space extends to infinity outwards; the mind stretches to infinity inwards.”

Colin Wilson book The Mind Parasites

Source: The Mind Parasites (1967), p. 38

“The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

As quoted by Arthur C. Clarke in "Meeting of the Minds : Buzz Aldrin Visits Arthur C. Clarke" by Andrew Chaikin (27 February 2001) http://web.archive.org/web/20010302082528/http://www.space.com/peopleinterviews/aldrin_clarke_010227.html

“Obama can't announce that man-in-space is out of date because of the political consequences… Senators and congressmen from Florida, Texas and Alabama (centers of space-program jobs) would give him so much trouble he can't cancel it.”

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