# Quote — Clifford D. Simak, Highway of Eternity

> An untold time ago, there was a well-founded perception that the human race would end and that something else must take its place.
>
> Why must something else take its place?
>
> I cannot tell you that. There is no solid rationale for it, but the belief seemed to be that there must be a dominant race upon this planet. Before men were the dinosaurs and before the dinosaurs there were the trilobites...

- Author: [Clifford D. Simak](https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak.md)
- Book: [Highway of Eternity](https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak/highway-of-eternity.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clifford_D._Simak#Highway_of_Eternity_(1986)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak/highway-of-eternity/an-untold-time

## More from this book

> "This is the core of the galaxy," Horseface said. "This is the very center of everything there is. A huge black hole eating up the galaxy. The end of everything."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak/highway-of-eternity/this-is-the.md)

> Without consciousness and intelligence, the universe would lack meaning.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak/highway-of-eternity/without-consciousness-and.md)

> Perversity, she thought. Could that have been what happened to the human race — a willing perversity that set at naught all human values which had been so hardly won and structured in the light of reason for a span of more than a million years? Could the human race, quite out of hand and with no sufficient reason, have turned its back upon everything that had built humanity? Or was it, perhaps, no more than second childhood, a shifting of the burden off one's shoulders and going back to the selfishness of the child who romped and frolicked without thought of consequence or liability?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak/highway-of-eternity/perversity-she-thought.md)