David Brin Quotes
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What hope has any endeavor which is based on hate and fear?
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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We can’t save the world without food. Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists.
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Survivalists. Gordon felt a wave of revulsion.
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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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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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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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How far do we owe loyalty to our creators’ dream? When have we earned the right to dream for ourselves?
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I’d rather be dead than so suspicious I can’t trust anybody.
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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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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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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 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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'You think I'm kidding?' the pilot asked.'No, we think you're crazy.'
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A dragon’s inertia is not shifted by yanking its tail.