Charles William Eliot

Be unselfish. That is the first and final commandment for those who would be useful and happy in their usefulness. If you think of yourself only, you cannot develop because you are choking the source of development, which is spiritual expansion through thought for others.

I believe that the day one stops being spiritual, one ends up being religious. I live by the adage that the only certainty in life is death. We should, therefore, learn to live for the day and be content.

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.