Poul Anderson Quotes
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As evil waxes, the very men who stand for good will in their fear use ever worse means o’ fighting, and thereby give evil a free beachhead.
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Did ignorance save his freedom, or merely his illusion of freedom?
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'My mother taught me a Spanish saying,' he remarked, 'that it takes four men to make a salad: a spendthrift for the oil, a philosopher for the seasonings, a miser for the vinegar, and a madman for the tossing.'
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His conscience must have gotten tired of nagging him and delivered an ultimatum.
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On our Earth, we’ve perforce learned all the knavery there is to know.
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I’m still spry, but I feel the teeth gnawing, and believe me, my friends, it was better to be young.
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You can have more adventure in an hour’s walk through a forest than in a year on a spaceship.
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Light fills the air, wind is aglow, drink of it, breathe of it, make leafing. Rainfall sows itself, it grows down through soil to the secret places where stones abide; it brings the strength of them up rootward. Lie still, molder away, then be again grass.
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A man isn't really alive till he has something bigger than himself and his own little happiness, for which he'd gladly die.
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I think most human misery is due to well-meaning fanatics like him.
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He’d seen too often how little of the universe is designed for man to neglect any safety measure.
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I walk beyond town, many of these nights, to stand under the high autumnal stars, look upward and wonder.
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As related, the bank was one of those eastern ones, with Roman pillars and cathedral dimness and, I suspect, a piece of Plymouth Rock in a reliquary.
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'Your son was in your own tradition.''Better, I hope,' said the old man. 'There would be little sense to existence, did boys have no chance to be more than their fathers.'
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What five books would I like to be remembered for? Well... Tau Zero, I like that one especially. It was somewhat of a tour de force, and I think it got across what I was trying for.
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A cultured, sensitive, observant man is a pleasure to be with in any age.
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Keep on thinking. Keep your thinking close to the ground, where it belongs. Don’t ever trade your liberty for another man’s offer to do your thinking and make your mistakes for you.
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What’s to explain? I’ve scant use for those types whose chief interest is their grubby little personal neuroses. Not in a universe as rich as this.
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Everard sighed, switched off his conscience, and began lying.
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Bombing: A method of warfare 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 Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Osaka, etc., though not Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Cf. missile.
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People usually take for granted that the way things are is the way things must be.
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I cannot believe you harbor any illusions about the barbarians being nature’s noblemen. I soon lost mine. They were every bit as ruthless. They were simply less efficient.
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What I’m trying to make you know, not in your forebrain but in your marrow, is that reality never conforms very well to the textbooks, and sometimes it doesn’t conform at all.
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I wrote the first book, Harvest of Stars, and as I was writing it, I saw that certain implications had barely been touched on... It's perfectly obvious that two completely revolutionary things are going on, with cybernetics, and biological science.