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We should ask, critically and with appeal to the numbers, whether the best site for a growing advancing industrial society is Earth, the Moon, Mars, some other planet, or somewhere else entirely. Surprisingly, the answer will be inescapable — the best site is "somewhere else entirely."

— Gerard K. O'Neill The High Frontier (1976)

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More quotes by Gerard K. O'Neill

Is the surface of a planet really the right place for expanding technological civilization?

Clearly our first task is to use the material wealth of space to solve the urgent problems we now face on Earth: to bring the poverty-stricken segments of the world up to a decent living standard, without recourse to war or punitive action against those already in material comfort; to provide for a maturing civilization the basic energy vital to its survival.

The High Frontier (1976)

There's no point in going out into space if the future that we'll see there is a sterile future living in tin cans. We have to able to recreate in space habitats which are as beautiful as earth-like as the loveliest parts of planet Earth and we can do that.

The High Frontier (1976)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Gerard K. O'Neill (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.