The First 90% Of The Job Takes

Not Far From Here, By A White Sun, Behind A Green Star, Lived The Steelypips, Illustrious, Industrious, And They Hadn't A Care: No Spats In Their Vats, No Rules, No Schools, No Gloom, No Evil Influence Of The Moon, No Trouble From Matter Or Antimatter - For They Had A Machine, A Dream Of A Machine, With Springs And Gears And Perfect In Every Respect. And They Lived With It, And On It, And Under It, And Inside It, For It Was All They Had - First They Saved Up All Their Atoms, Then They Put Them All Together, And If One Didn't Fit, Why They Chipped At It A Bit, And Everything Was Just Fine.

Really, One Of Us Ought To Have The Courage To Call The Experiment Off And Shoulder The Responsibility For The Decision, But The Majority Reckons That That Kind Of Courage Would Be A Sign Of Cowardice, And The First Step In A Retreat. They Think It Would Mean An Undignified Surrender For Mankind As If There Was Any Dignity In Floundering And Drowning In What We Don't Understand And Never Will.

...it Is Easy Not To Believe In Monsters, Considerably More Difficult To Escape Their Dread And Loathsome Clutches.

There Are Friends With Whom We Share Neither Interests Nor Any Particular Experiences, Friends With Whom We Never Correspond, Whom We Seldom Meet And Then Only By Chance, But Whose Existence Nonetheless Has For Us A Special If Uncanny Meaning. For Me The Eiffel Tower Is Just Such A Friend, And Not Merely Because It Happens To Be The Symbol Of A City, For Paris Leaves Me Neither Hot Nor Cold. I First Became Aware Of This Attachment Of Mine When Reading In The Paper About Plans For Its Demolition, The Mere Thought Of Which Filled Me With Alarm.

How Do You Expect To Communicate With The Ocean, When You Can’t Even Understand One Another?