Poul Anderson Quotes
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All those agonizing philosophical-theological conundrums amount to 'Ask a silly question, get a silly answer.'
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Her rank was higher than his, so high that no one in her family worked productively.
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Missile: A self-contained device which delivers high explosives from the air, condemned because of its effects upon women, children, the aged, the sick, and other non-combatants, unless these happen to have resided in Saigon, Da Nang, Hué, etc. Cf. bombing.
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Say on. If you are a rogue, you are at least an interesting one.
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Anybody can find infinite Mandelbrot figures in his navel.
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I do not think the coerced mind ever really learns an art.
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Mortal combat corrupts, and war corrupts absolutely.
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You know what they say about bold spacemen never becoming old spacemen.
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Better a life like a falling star, bright across the dark, than a deathlessness which can see naught above or beyond itself.
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'You are very honest about the situation of your own country.'Deirdre said roughly, 'Most of us won’t admit it, but I think it best to look truth in the eyes.'
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'Do you know,' said Maclaren, 'there is one sin which is punished with unfailing certainty, and must therefore be the deadliest sin in all time. Stupidity.'
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Like sensible people throughout history, the average Phoenician wanted as little to do with his government as possible.
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You should pay no heed to what some yokel priest has prated of. What does he know?
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It was lonely, not even knowing yourself.
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Hard to say whether personal immortality would be a good thing or not. Not for the masses, surely! Too many of them as it was. But a select few, like Terangi Maclaren-or was it worth the trouble? Even given boats, chess, music, the No Drama, beautiful women and beautiful spectroscopes, life could get heavy.
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They were not plagued that night, which Hugi said was without doubt because something worse was being prepared. Holger was inclined to share the dwarf’s pessimism.
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For himself, he had never thought it would be this bad. He had stopped remembering her, except maybe ten times a day, but now she came to him and the forgetting would have to be done all over again.
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Too far a retreat from reality is insanity.
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And ninety-nine percent of the human race, no matter how smart they are, will do the convenient thing instead of the wise thing, and kid themselves into thinking they can somehow escape the consequences. We’re just built that way.
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Pioneering is an unlimited chance to become the biggest frog, provided the puddle is small enough.
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Silence fell. The clock on my mantel ticked aloud and the wind outside flowed past like a river.
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You cannot imagine how wearisome existence grows, alone and immortal.
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'At least we can put a little sense into life.''I don’t know whether we do or whether we find what was always there,' he replied. 'Nor do I care greatly. To me, the important thing is that the purpose-order, beauty, spirit, whatever you want to call it-does exist.'
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In Harvest of Stars, there is this notion, not original with me of course, that it will become possible to download at least the basic aspects of a human personality into a machine program.