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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Say on. If you are a rogue, you are at least an interesting one.
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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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Mortal combat corrupts, and war corrupts absolutely.
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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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Anybody can find infinite Mandelbrot figures in his navel.
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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 know what they say about bold spacemen never becoming old spacemen.
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I do not think the coerced mind ever really learns an art.
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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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'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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It was lonely, not even knowing yourself.
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Pioneering is an unlimited chance to become the biggest frog, provided the puddle is small enough.
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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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You cannot imagine how wearisome existence grows, alone and immortal.
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I’ll give you one thing to mull over, though. If the body’s such a valueless piece of pork, and we’ll all meet each other in the sweet bye and bye, and so on, why’re you busting every gut you own to get back to your wife?
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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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Man does not live by bread alone, nor guns, paperwork, theses, naked practicalities.
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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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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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Life isn’t a fairy tale; the knight who kills the dragon doesn’t necessarily get the princess. So what? Who’d want to live in a cosmos less rich and various than the real one?
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We're mortal - which is to say, we're ignorant, stupid, and sinful - but those are only handicaps. Our pride is that nevertheless, now and then, we do our best. A few times we succeed. What more dare we ask for?