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A sane being wished for peace and serenity, not to be the mortar in which the ingredients of destiny are finely ground.
David Brin -
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.
David Brin
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It was better to imagine a sacrifice being for something.
David Brin -
They say survival is Nature’s only form of flattery.
David Brin -
You can’t fight biology. Only push at the rules, here and there.
David Brin -
From you, my boy, I expect no less than the completely preposterous and utterly calamitous.
David Brin -
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.
David Brin -
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.
David Brin
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A neurosis defends itself by coming up with rationalizations to explain away bizarre behavior.
David Brin -
Life is not fair...Anyone who says it is, or even that it ought to be, is a fool or worse.
David Brin -
'It’s magic,' the chief cook concluded, in awe.'No, not magic,' the ship’s doctor replied. 'It’s much more. It’s mathematics.'
David Brin -
Some smart moves were little more than nicely padded traps.
David Brin -
'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.
David Brin -
'They accepted warriors...' he emphasized, '...That divinely mad type that’s so valuable when needed, and such a problem when it’s not.'
David Brin
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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.
David Brin -
In the end, both extremes had more in common with each other than either did with the middle.
David Brin -
'All right,' she said. 'You’ve convinced me. Men are good for something, after all.'
David Brin -
What was it like, he wondered, to care about something so passionately? He suspected it made her somehow more alive than he was.
David Brin -
'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.'
David Brin -
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.
David Brin
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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.
David Brin -
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.
David Brin -
Beware of assumptions that seem 'obvious' in one decade. They may become quaint in the next.
David Brin -
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.
David Brin