David Brin

“Competition, by itself, always leads to cheating by the powerful, who try to establish pyramids of power, like feudalism. Yet, competition is the great creative force! So how do we save it from its own contradictions? By cooperation! By cooperating with each other, via politics, to make rules and prevent cheating, so that competition can thrive!”

“I hate the whole übermensch, superman temptation that pervades science fiction. I believe no protagonist should be so competent, so awe-inspiring, that a committee of 20 really hard-working, intelligent people couldn't do the same thing.”

“The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.”

“Learn to control ego. Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic! But we all need criticism. Criticism is the only known antidote to error.”

“Blatant idiocies had been tried by early men and women—foolishness that would never have been considered by species aware of the laws of nature. Desperate superstitions had bred during the savage centuries. Styles of government, intrigues, philosophies were tested with abandon. It was almost as if Orphan Earth had been a planetary laboratory, upon which a series of senseless and bizarre experiments were tried.”

““Where there is mind, there is always solution,” Keneenk taught. All problems contained the elements of their answer.”

“What point was there in pursuing an ever-elusive popularity?”

“You don’t have conversations with microprocessors. You tell them what to do, then helplessly watch the disaster when they take you literally!”

“Words penetrated the tank from the outer room. They were tantalizing, like those ghosts of meaning in a great symphony—hinting that the composer had caught a glimpse of something notes could only vaguely convey and words could never even approach.”

“He wasn’t afraid of dying, only of having not done all he could, and not properly spitting in the eye of death when it came for him. That final gesture was important.”

“It was better to imagine a sacrifice being for something.”

“He read about humanity’s age-old racial struggles. Had it really been less than half a millennium since humans contrived gigantic, fatuous lies about each other simply because of pigment shades, and killed millions because they believed their own lies?”

“Petals floating by, Drift through my woman’s hand, As she remembers me.”

“We are having extreme difficulty with local gangs of “Survivalists.” Fortunately, these infestations of egotists are mostly too paranoid to band together. They’re as much trouble to each other as to us, I suppose. Still, they are becoming a real problem.”

“Apparently, the Fates were not so unsubtle as to deal him another blow just yet. He knew they didn’t operate that way. They always let you hope for a while longer, then strung it out before they really let you have it.”

“Survivalists. Gordon felt a wave of revulsion.”

“He tried again, but their sullen, rural obstinacy was impervious to logic.”

“He managed to lie by implication while speaking words that were the literal truth, a skill he had grown good at, if not proud of.”

“It’s clear that male human beings should never have been left in control of the world all these centuries. Many of you are wonderful beyond belief, but too many others will always be bloody lunatics.Your sex is simply built that way. Its better side gave us power and light, science and reason, medicine and philosophy. Meanwhile the dark half spent its time dreaming up unimaginable hells and putting them into practice.”

“How can we set up a system which encourages individuals to strive and excel, and yet which shows some compassion to the weak, and weeds out madmen and tyrants?”

“Of course we can establish constitutional checks and balances, but those won’t mean a thing unless citizens make sure the safeguards are taken seriously. The greedy and the power-hungry will always look for ways to break the rules, or twist them to their advantage.”

“It’s said that “power corrupts,” but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable.”

“Freedom was wonderful beyond relief. But with it came that bitch, Duty.”

““They accepted warriors...” he emphasized, “...That divinely mad type that’s so valuable when needed, and such a problem when it’s not.””

“All legends must be based on lies, Gordon realized. We exaggerate, and even come to believe the tales, after a while.”

“The same was true of the most popular girls. They had no empathy, no compassion for more normal kids.”

“It was silly to suppose that trials only hardened men, automatically making them wise. He knew many who were stupid, arrogant, and mean, in spite of having suffered.”

“A neurosis defends itself by coming up with rationalizations to explain away bizarre behavior.”

“A sane being wished for peace and serenity, not to be the mortar in which the ingredients of destiny are finely ground.”

“She had called in the debt that parents owe a child for bringing her, unasked, into a strange world. One should never make an offer without knowing full well what will happen if it is accepted.”

“He was, after all, a diplomat, and understood that the best and firmest deals are based on open self-interest.”

““After all,” he muttered, “what can they do to shake the confidence of a fellow who’s got delusions of adequacy?””

““This is a lovely world,” he sighed. “And yet it has suffered horror. Sometimes, so-called civilization seems bent on destroying those very things which it is sworn to protect.””

“Had I been wrong, this would still have been the honorable thing to do.I am very glad, however, to find out that I was right.”

“Life is not fair...Anyone who says it is, or even that it ought to be, is a fool or worse.”

“Apocalypses, apparently, are subject to fashion like everything else. What terrifies one generation can seem obsolete and trivial to the next. Take our modern attitude toward war. Most anthropologists now think this activity was based originally on theft and rape—perhaps rewarding enterprises for some caveman or Viking, but no longer either sexy or profitable in the context of nuclear holocaust! Today, we look back on large-scale warfare as an essentially silly enterprise.”

“We can’t save the world without food. Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists.”

“Anyone who tries to predict the future is inevitably a fool. Present company included. A prophet without a sense of humor is just stupid.”

“It was a queer, disturbing instant of recognition. We all create monsters in our minds. The only important difference may be which of us let our monsters become real.”

““You think I'm kidding?” the pilot asked.“No, we think you're crazy.””

“What was it like, he wondered, to care about something so passionately? He suspected it made her somehow more alive than he was.”

“It had been different during his first year of graduate school, when he temporarily forsook physics to explore instead the realm of the senses. Applying logic to the late-blooming quandries of maturity, he had parsed the\xa0elements of encounter, banter, negotiation, and consummation, separating and solving the variables one by one until the problem—if not generally solved—did appear to have tractable special solutions.”

“The good side of the world media village was the sense it gave ten billion that each of them had at least some small connection with the whole. The bad side was that no one ever encountered anything, anymore, that was completely new.”

“From you, my boy, I expect no less than the completely preposterous and utterly calamitous.”

“She closed her eyes. And while her intellect wouldn’t let her realize her deepest fear, that all this might soon be gone forever, nevertheless she stood there for a time and worshipped the only way a person like her could worship—in silence and solitude, under the temple of the sky.”

“One of life’s joys was to have friends who gave you reality checks...who would call you on your crap before it rose so high you drowned in it.”

““All this talk of using tax policy to ‘assess social costs’...what a dumb idea. The only way to stop polluters is to put them against walls and shoot them.””

“Ideologies are too seductive anyway. It does a man good to see things from a different point of view.”

“There’s no urgency, a third voice urged, pleading compromise. No duty calls. Hold onto the illusion a little longer.No, it can’t. Besides, you're awake now.”

“They saw the end coming, he thought, looking down the file of awful figures. But they were dead wrong about the reasons why. They assumed only gods had the power to wreak such havoc on their world, but people caused the devastation here.Alex felt compassion for the ancient Pasquans—but a superior sort nevertheless. In blaming gods, they had conveniently diverted censure from the real culprit. The designer of weapons. The feller of trees. The destroyer. Man himself.”

“Prison for the crime of puberty—that was how secondary school had seemed, when he really thought back on it.”

“Daisy had learned not to pay much heed to techno-fads. To her fell the task of preserving as much as possible, so that when humanity finally did fall, it wouldn’t take everything else to the grave with it.”

“On this occasion, despite the wind and sparkling stars, they looked just like huge chunks of stone, pathetically chiseled by desperate folk to resemble stern gods. People did bizarre things when they were afraid...as most men and women had been for nearly all the time since the species evolved.”

“The lesson they took home with them was simple; it takes a full belly before a man or woman gives a tinker’s damn about anything as large as a planet.”

““Huh,” Sepak thought, marveling how much one could learn by just sitting still and observing. It wasn’t a skill one learned in the frenetic pace of modern society.”

“What kind of man takes a live bomb across the seas in order to blow up other people? People who have mothers and lovers and children, just like him?Probably either a professional or a patriot, Alex thought. Or, worse, both.”

“Knowledge isn’t restrained by the limits of Malthus. Information doesn’t need topsoil to grow in, only freedom. Given eager minds and experimentation, it feeds itself like a chain reaction.”

“Nation states are archaic leftovers from when each man feared the tribe over the hill, an attitude we can’t afford anymore.”

“Look at all the happiest, sanest people you've known, Nelson. Really listen to them. I bet you'll find they don’t fear a little inconsistency or uncertainty now and then. Oh, they try always to be true to their core beliefs, to achieve their goals and keep their promises. Still, they also avoid too much rigidity, forgiving the occasional contradiction and unexpected thought. They are content to be many.”

“Nelson replayed his last musings to himself, and silently laughed. Listen to you! Jen was right. You're a born philosopher. In other words, full of shit.”

“It also became clear why the nations were expected to commence major space enterprises. Henceforth, the raw materials for industrial civilization were to be taken from Earth’s lifeless sisters, not the mother world. All mines currently being gouged through Terra’s crust were to be phased out within a generation and no new ones started. Henceforth, Earth must be preserved for the real treasures—its species—and man would have to look elsewhere for mere baubles like gold or platinum or iron.”

“The man talked, but somehow nothing he said seemed to make any sense.”

“History and geology show what an eyeblink it’s been since our current, comfortable culture came about. And yet that culture is using up absolutely everything at a ferocious rate.”

“Beware of assumptions that seem “obvious” in one decade. They may become quaint in the next.”

“Some smart moves were little more than nicely padded traps.”

“Intelligence is loose in the galaxy. Power is in our hands, for better or worse. We can modify Nature’s rules, if we dare, but we cannot ignore her lessons.”

“At her station in life, wisdom dictated keeping a low profile.And yet...”

“It could be worse. I can’t think how right now, but I’m sure it could be worse.”

“Maia lifted her gaze to watch low clouds briefly occult a brightly speckled, placid sea, its green shoals aflicker with silver schools of fish and the flapping shadows of hovering swoop-birds. The variegated colors were lush, voluptuous. Mixing with scents carried by the moist, heavy wind, they made a stew for the senses, spiced with fecund exudates of life.The beauty was heavy-handed, adamantly consoling. She got the point—that life goes on.”

“There was that word quaint again. It seemed to refer patronizingly to anything simple or backward, from the viewpoint of a city-bred tourist.”

“You can’t fight biology. Only push at the rules, here and there.”

“Loneliness, her arch enemy, never seemed content.”

“Piss on the world, or it’ll piss on you.”

“What hope has any endeavor which is based on hate and fear?”

“The heritage we give our children, and the myths we leave to sustain them, must work with the tug and press of life, or they will fail. Adaptability has to be enshrined alongside stability, or the ghost of Darwin will surely come back to haunt us, whispering in our ears the penalty of conceit.Survival.”

“Maia recognized a look of true religion in the other woman’s eyes. A version and interpretation that conveniently justified what had already been decided.”

“Wisdom. No match for the troublemaker Curiosity.”

““Life is the continuation of existence, yet no thing endures. We are all patterns, seeking to propagate. Patterns which bring other patterns into being, then vanish, as if we’ve never been.””

“The notions she fought with needed more than the simple algebra she’d been grudgingly taught at Lamai Hold. More and more she resented how they had robbed her of this, arguably her one talent, driving her from math and other abstractions by the simple expedient of making them seem boring.”

“Cultural contamination that is directed outward is always seen as “enlightenment.””

“But it’s not so hard, learning to picture yourself as part of a great chain. One that began long before you, and will go on long after.”

““All right,” she said. “You’ve convinced me. Men are good for something, after all.””

“How far do we owe loyalty to our creators’ dream? When have we earned the right to dream for ourselves?”

““It’s magic,” the chief cook concluded, in awe.”No, not magic,” the ship’s doctor replied. “It’s much more. It’s mathematics.””

“In the end, both extremes had more in common with each other than either did with the middle.”

“Is there an inverse relation between knowledge and wisdom? At times it seems the more we know, the less we understand.I am not the first to note this quandary. One scholar recently wrote, “Lysos and her followers chase the siren call of pastoralism, like countless romantics before them, idealizing a past Golden Age that never was, pursuing a serenity possible only in the imagination.””

“They say survival is Nature’s only form of flattery.”

“Naroin stopped, shook her head. “Take it from an experienced hand, child. It’s no good blamin’ yourself for what you couldn’t prevent. Not so long as you tried.”Maia’s lips pressed together. That was exactly what she had been telling herself. From the look in Naroin’s eyes, it didn’t get much more believable as you got older.”

“I’d rather be dead than so suspicious I can’t trust anybody.”

“I’m learning, Maia thought. They keep making mistakes and I keep getting stronger.At this rate, someday I may actually gain control over my life.”

““I thought they were very good at what they did.””Of course they were good!” Brill glanced sharply. “The issue is what one chooses to be good at. The arts are fine, for hobbies. I play six instruments, myself. But they pose no great challenge to a mature mind.””

“A dragon’s inertia is not shifted by yanking its tail.”

“As in elections, the law pretended universal rights, while securing the interests of powerful houses.”

“It is dangerous these days for a male to write even glancingly on feminist themes. Did anyone attack Margaret Atwood’s right to extrapolate religio-machismo in The Handmaid’s Tale? Women writers appear vouchsafed insight into the souls of men—credit that seldom flows the other way. It is a sexist and offensive assumption, which does not advance understanding.”

“It is senseless to proclaim that it’s evil to make generalizations about groups. Generalization is a natural human mental process, and many generalizations are true—in average. What often does promote evil behavior is the lazy, nasty habit of believing that generalizations have anything at all to do with individuals. We have no right to pre-judge that a specific man can’t nurture, or a particular woman cannot fight.”

“It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.”

“In all of history, we have found just one cure for error—a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism.”

“Alas, criticism has always been what human beings, especially leaders, most hate to hear.”

“I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring.”

“Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.”

“I maintain contacts with researchers in dozens of fields, both for fun and to keep up. In fact, any well-read citizen can stay reasonably current nowadays, by reading any of the popular science magazines that describe remarkable advances every week, in terms non-specialists can understand. The advance of human knowledge has become — at long last — a vividly enjoyable spectator sport! And a growing movement toward amateur science shows there is room for participants at every level.”

“Every marvel of our age arose out of the critical give and take of an open society. No other civilization ever managed to incorporate this crucial innovation, weaving it into daily life. And if you disagree with this ... say so!”

“The Union will awaken. It always has. We always will.”

“There was one exception to the rule that all our foes have committed the Decadence Assumption. Ho Chi Minh never underestimated America. His avowed hero was George Washington and he remained in awe of the U.S., all his life. He remains the only enemy leader who ever defeated us at war, and then only because our hubris (not decadence) got the better of us.”