Ben Bova Quotes

#1. The term sci-fi, which most science fiction writers loathe, I will reserve for those motion pictures that claim to be science fiction but are actually based on comic strips. Or worse.

Ben Bova

#2. The Old Ones knew that life is not rare, but precious; not fragile, but vulnerable. Life is as deep as the seas in which it was born, as strong as the mountains that give it shelter, as universal as the stars themselves.

Ben Bova

#3. As long as we're tied to Middle Eastern oil we're tied to Middle Eastern politics. We're hostages to the terrorists and nutcases who want to wipe out Israel and the United States because we support Israel.

Ben Bova

#4. Feeding the starving poor only increases their number.

Ben Bova

#5. Up here [in space], you're free. Really free, for the first time in your life. All the laws and rules and prejudices they've been dumping on you all your life ... they're all down there. Up here it's a new start. You can be yourself and do your own thing ... and nobody can tell you different.

Ben Bova

#6. We try to teach our students how to think ... how to use their brains and imagination. Individual subjects can always be learned by a man who knows how to learn. We teach them to think, and the other subjects arise by themselves ...

Ben Bova

#7. In science there is a dictum: don't add an experiment to an experiment. Don't make things unnecessarily complicated. In writing fiction, the more fantastic the tale, the plainer the prose should be. Don't ask your readers to admire your words when you want them to believe your story.

Ben Bova

#8. The problem is that Americans would like to be independent of the rest of the world ... Except the world ain't that way. Trying to be independent of the rest of the world is to commit suicide.

Ben Bova

#9. Omni is not a science magazine. It is a magazine about the future ... Omni was sui generis. Although there were plenty of science magazines over the years ... Omni was the first magazine to slant all its pieces toward the future. It was fun to read and gorgeous to look at.

Ben Bova

#10. A fanatic who is willing to die for his cause thinks nothing of killing you for his cause.

Ben Bova

#11. When I started understanding how science works, it occurred to me that there just is no evidence that there is a God.

Ben Bova

#12. Red tape has killed more people than bullets...

Ben Bova

#13. My first published novel was written for teenagers, and there were rules laid down by the publisher: no sex, no smoking, no swearing. I blew up entire solar systems, I consigned billions of people to horrible death; they didn't seem to mind that at all. But no hanky-panky.

Ben Bova

#14. Lolling around libraries paging through books that haven't been checked out since 1975 is one of my principal joys as a writer.

Ben Bova

#15. A new space race has begun, and most Americans are not even aware of it. This race is not [about] political prestige or military power. This new race involves the whole human species in a contest against time.

Ben Bova