Poul Anderson Quotes
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'You are much too kind,' said Holger, overwhelmed.'Nay.' Alfric waved his hand. 'You mortals know not how tedious undying life can become, and how gladly a challenge such as this is greeted. ’Tis I should thank you.'
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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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Did ignorance save his freedom, or merely his illusion of freedom?
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Inland, all except criminals lived in a tightly pulled net of regulations, duties, social standing, tax collection, expectations of how to act and speak and think-'sort of like late twentieth-century USA' Everard grumbled to himself.
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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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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 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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You can have more adventure in an hour’s walk through a forest than in a year on a spaceship.
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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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A cultured, sensitive, observant man is a pleasure to be with in any age.
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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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His conscience must have gotten tired of nagging him and delivered an ultimatum.
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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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'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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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.
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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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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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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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I think most human misery is due to well-meaning fanatics like him.
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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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The old man murmured: 'Aye, we draw to an end. Dying hurts. Nonetheless the forefathers were wise who in their myths made Nan coequal with Lesu. A thing which endured forever would become unendurable. Death opens a way, for peoples as well as for people.'
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On our Earth, we’ve perforce learned all the knavery there is to know.