"The stars are silent. Voyager among dark harbors, I listen, but the midnight wind carries only the sound of trees and water lapping against the gunwale and the solitary cry of the night swallow. There is no dawn. No searing sun rises in east or west. The rocks over Calumal do not silver, and the great round world slides through the void."

"“I suspect we would be wise,” he said without looking up, “to avoid declaring what God will or will not allow.”"

"A man is entitled to only one great passion in a lifetime. Whether it’s music or a profession or a woman, everything else pales in its afterglow. The searing shock so changes one’s chemistry that if the object is lost, the experience can never be repeated. Only anticlimax remains."

"He’d grown a mustache since Randall had last seen him. It was hard to understand why: He looked devious enough without it."

"How does it happen that the most intractable types always rise to the top?"

"The cultures we can look at had already grasped the essential unity of nature. No board of gods can survive that knowledge."

"Henry had been around long enough to know better than to disagree. But he forgot to implement."

"He would make a good manager, but he had a little too much integrity to survive in a top job."

"He objected on principle to the powerful."

"The problem is that too often the only people who can act don’t want change. Power doesn’t so much corrupt as it breeds conservatism."

"Show me what a people admire, and I will tell you everything about them that matters."

"Maybe the universe doesn’t approve of places like New York."

"The impending collision out there somewhere in the great dark between a gas giant and a world very much like our own has some parallels to the eternal collision between religion and common sense. One is bloated and full of gas, and the other is measurable and solid. One engulfs everything around it, and the other simply provides a place to stand. One is a rogue destroyer that has come in out of the night, and the other is a warm well-lighted place vulnerable to the sainted mobs."

"The only people he knew of who would have leveled material advantage so that no one had any were of course those who had none to start with."

"During his sixty-odd years, he had found there were as many louts in the patrician classes as there were ignoramuses farther down the social spectrum."

"(He remarked) that anyone who truly wished to develop tolerance toward other human beings should start by casting aside any and all religious affiliation. When challenged by one of the other guests, he had asked innocently whether anyone could name a single person put to death or driven from his home by an atheist over theological matters."

"Throughout our long and sorry history it has been men who supposed themselves to be exemplars of integrity who have done all the damage. Every crusade, whether for decent literary standards or to cover women’s bodies or to free the holy land, had been launched, endorsed, and enthusiastically perpetrated by men of character."

"Faith has its price. When misfortune strikes the true believer, he assumes he has done something to deserve punishment, but isn’t quite certain what. The realist, recognizing that he lives in a Darwinian universe, is simply grateful to have made it to another sunset."

"He took particular delight in neutralizing those who desperately needed to be neutralized, those overblown, self-important, arrogant half-wits who were always running about dictating behavior, morals, and theology to everyone else. And he never looked back."

"Tides are like politics. They come and go with a great deal of fuss and noise, but inevitably they leave the beach just as they found it. On those few occasions when major change does occur, it is rarely good news."

"“Sometimes,” he said, “I think life is just one long series of blown opportunities.”"

"Few of the virtues are really useful. Fidelity leads to lost opportunity, truth-telling to injured feelings, charity to additional solicitations. The least productive, and possibly the most overrated, is faith. The faithful deny reason, close their minds to the evidence of their senses, and remain unfailingly optimistic in the face of disaster. They inevitably get just what they deserve."

"Mac continued to write scathing commentary on assorted hypocrisies in high places and low, without which hypocrisies, he cheerfully conceded, civilized life would be impossible."

"“One should always be skeptical. That’s always been our problem. We have too many believers.” “Believers in what?” “In everything.”"

"The man was either foolish or fearless. Assuming there was a difference."

"So long as you believe in some truth you do not believe in yourself. You are a servant. A man of faith."

"What would happen is that people like Geroge and Alyx would grow old and die chasing a dream. Although there were probably worse things to do with one’s life."

"One could not always put safety up front as the prime goal. Do that, and who would ever achieve anything of note?"

"There’d been studies over the years supporting the proposition that groups composed exclusively of women usually made intelligent decisions, that exclusively male groups did a bit less well, and that mixed groups did most poorly of all, by a substantial margin. It appeared that, when women were present, testosterone got the upper hand and men took greater risks than they might otherwise. Correspondingly, women in the mixed group tended to revert to roles, becoming more passive, and going along with whatever misjudgment the males might perpetrate."

"Her experience had taught her that people who insisted on having others recognize their outstanding qualities usually didn’t have any."

"The Peacekeepers had a tradition that every problem had a solution. It was a nice slogan. Wasn’t true, but it sounded good."

"“Organized mayhem,” Nick commented, “seems to be the chief preoccupation of intelligent species everywhere.”"

"“Alyx,” she said, “you're going to be a legend.” “I already am, Captain,” she said."

"Embrace your life, find what it is that you love, and pursue it with all your soul. For if you do not, when you come to die, you will find that you have not lived."

"Our generation faces only one danger, that we might say to ourselves this is not our problem, and that we will pass it off to the distant future. That we might shrug and say to ourselves that a thousand years is a long time. That we will become complacent and conclude that this problem will take care of itself. But I say to you, we should take no satisfaction in the fact that we ourselves are in no physical danger. This is a hazard to our world, to everything we hope to pass on to future generations. And it is clear that we should act now, while we have the time."

"Prudence, and experience, suggested she expect the worst."

"Defend your opinion only if it can be shown to be true, not because it is your opinion."

"The queen of virtues is the recognition of one’s own flaws."

"Somewhere we taught ourselves that our opinions are more significant than the facts. And somehow we get our egos and our opinions and Truth all mixed up in a single package, so that when something does challenge one of the notions to which we subscribe, we react as if it challenges us."

"Of course, they (i. e., demons) had always been observed with some regularity, but that could usually be ascribed to an overabundance of piety or wine or imagination. Take your pick."

"Put the money into schools. Rational ones that train young minds to think, to demand that persons in authority show the evidence for the ideas they push. Do that, and we won’t need to provide a world for the Sacred Brethren who, given the opportunity, would run everyone else off the planet."

"So we have progressed to the point where we can move politicians around faster than light. I'm not sure I see the advantage."

"He was a decent enough guy, but he was always at his worst when he was trying to be sincere."

"In the larger scale of things, his opinions didn’t count anyhow. The politicians made the decisions, and the voters paid no attention."

"If you're right, and nobody really cares what’s out there, I wonder whether we’re even worth saving."

"The reality is, we don’t want our kids to be smart. We want them to be like us. Only more so."

"Most government and corporate leaders would have trouble getting people to follow them out of a burning building. One way you can tell the worst of them is that they talk about leadership a lot. I doubt Winston Churchill ever used the word. Or, for that matter, Attila the Hun."

"Idiots are not responsible for what they do. The real guilt falls on rational people who sit on their hands while the morons run wild. You can opt out if you want to. Play it safe. But if you do, don’t complain when the roof comes down."

"Freedom and idiots make a volatile mix. And the sad truth is that the idiocy quotient in the general population is alarmingly high."

"The earliest religious feeling MacAllister could recall was being annoyed at Adam, because it was his fault that girls subsequently had to wear clothes."