David Brin Quotes
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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.
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Beware of assumptions that seem 'obvious' in one decade. They may become quaint in the next.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Anyone who tries to predict the future is inevitably a fool. Present company included. A prophet without a sense of humor is just stupid.
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We can’t save the world without food. Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists.
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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.
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Survivalists. Gordon felt a wave of revulsion.
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I’d rather be dead than so suspicious I can’t trust anybody.
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How far do we owe loyalty to our creators’ dream? When have we earned the right to dream for ourselves?
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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.
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Ideologies are too seductive anyway. It does a man good to see things from a different point of view.
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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?
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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.
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What point was there in pursuing an ever-elusive popularity?
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The Union will awaken. It always has. We always will.
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A hallmark of sanity, Alex, is the courage to face even unpleasant points of view.
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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.
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There was that word quaint again. It seemed to refer patronizingly to anything simple or backward, from the viewpoint of a city-bred tourist.
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Petals floating by, Drift through my woman’s hand, As she remembers me.
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He was, after all, a diplomat, and understood that the best and firmest deals are based on open self-interest.