“We must remember that the United States, regardless of what the uninf — Walter Tevis

"“Do you realize that you will not only wreck your civilization, such as it is, and kill most of your people; but that you will also poison the fish in your rivers, the squirrels in your trees, the flocks of birds, the soil, the water? There are times when you seem, to us, like apes loose in a museum, carrying knives, slashing the canvases, breaking the statuary with hammers.” For a moment Bryce did not speak. Then he said, “But it was human beings who painted the pictures, made the statues.” “Only a few human beings,” Newton said. “Only a few.”"

"He thought, looking at the cat, if only you were the intelligent species on this world. And then, smiling wryly, maybe you are."

"Weren’t there naive arts and sophisticated arts? And corrupt arts as well? And might that not be true of the sciences too? Could chemistry be more corrupt than botany? But that wasn’t so. It was the uses, the ends…"

"Bryce thought for a minute. Then he laughed at his situation: using a Martian, in a bar, for a confessor. But perhaps it was appropriate."

"It always horrified Bryce to see professors fawn on businessmen—the very men they ridiculed in their private conversations—whenever a research contract might be in the offing."

"Are you from Venus? Jupiter? Philadelphia?"