The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
Only the educated are free.
Be gentle to all and stern with yourself.
If you can dream it, you can do it.
If you're going through hell, keep going.
You never know what motivates you.
The wise does at once what the fool does at last.
What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.
Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.
Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.
In hard-core science fiction in which characters are responding to a change in environment, caused by nature or the universe or technology, what readers want to see is how people cope, and so the character are present to cope, or fail to cope.