Short Story Writers From England

"The heirs, naturally, wanted everything to be theirs as soon as possible. No one is more rapacious, ruthless, and impatient than a loving family member."

"“But remember, it was all hearsay.” “In Washington, hearsay’s the same as gospel truth.”"

"If deadly violence were to be committed, he was like me. He would think it better to give than to receive."

"“Could it wipe out life on Earth?” “Oh, I very much doubt that. Single-celled and oceanic forms will presumably survive. But it might make life impossible for humans.” “Actually, that tends to be my primary concern. Sponges and oysters will have to take care of themselves.”"

"What does one do when a madman suggests an appealing course of action? One worries—but probably goes along with it."

"But mere plausibility did not make the statement true."

"Be an optimist! It’s the only way to live."

"An old axiom: when you are totally confused, don’t make things worse by talking."

"No purpose is served by making private suffering into a public event."

"If you tried really hard, you could take that as a compliment."

"Other people’s jobs always seemed easier than yours until you actually had to do them."

"Maddy listened closely to John’s voice. It was calm, but with an odd undercurrent of excitement. She thought, That weirdo, he’s enjoying this. If I were a failing component, I’d get more of his attention than I do now. Engineers!"

"“It is my personal belief that nothing can exceed light speed,” said Sy at last. “I will mistrust anyone, government or Immortal, man or woman, human or alien, who attempts to tell me otherwise without providing convincing evidence.”"

"“I’ve been testing Kallen’s Law—my name for it, not his. Remember what he said? ‘Anything that can be put into a data bank by one person can be taken out of it by another, if you’re smart enough and have enough time.’ That’s one problem with a computer-based society, and one reason why computers were so tightly controlled on Pentecost: it’s almost impossible to prevent access to computer-stored information.”"

"And now I think about it, I never really wanted to live forever. I just want to live well."

"A long time ago humans talked of terraforming Mars and Venus, but we never did it. Just too busy blowing ourselves up, I guess, ever to get round to it."

"Where orbits are wildly varying, life has no chance to develop. Changes are too extreme. Temperatures melt tin, then solidify nitrogen. If it is once established, life is persistent; it can adapt to many extremes. But there is a fragility in the original creation that calls for a long period of tightly-controlled variations."

"But humans had to learn to ignore appearance. No two beings who shared common thinking processes and common goals should be truly alien to each other."

"Mathematics is universal. But very little else is."

"Human history extends for approximately ten thousand years before the Expansion, with written records available for roughly half that time. Unfortunately, the human tendency for self-delusion, self-aggrandizement, and baseless faith in human superiority over all other intelligent life-forms renders much of the written record unreliable. Serious research workers are advised to seek alternative primary data sources concerning humans. —From the Universal Species Catalog (Subclass: Sapients)"

"“It sounds reasonable to me.” “Reasonable, but not true. Big difference.”"

"See, everybody looks at the world from his own point of view. I call it the ground state of the resting mind. And your brain does the same thing, left alone it returns to and thinks about what it’s really interested in."

"“Lop the top-end tail off the distribution of human intelligence and creativity,” he went on, “and it would make no measurable difference to the population. Only one person in a billion is out beyond the six-sigma level. That’s what we’re talking about here. But eventually those one-in-a-billion make a huge difference. Ninety-five percent of all human progress comes from less than one thousandth of one percent of the population.”"

"Not it. He. Bey was sure he would have determined that for himself after a few more seconds. There were a hundred clues as to the innate sex of a form, and most of them had nothing to do with appearance or dress."

"When you got right down to it, every important decision in life was made with inadequate information."

"Sometimes wealth and power merely created the desire for more of the same."

"Earth has been regarded for centuries as a giant self-regulating machine, absorbing all changes, great and small, and diluting their effects until they become invisible on a global scale. Mankind has taken that stability for granted. Careless of consequences, we have watched as forests were cleared, lakes poisoned, rivers dammed and diverted, mountains leveled, whole plains dug out for their mineral and fuel content. And nothing disastrous happened. Earth tolerated the insults, and always she restored the status quo. Always—until now. Until finally some hidden critical point has been passed. The move away from a steady state is signalled in many ways: by increasing ocean temperatures, by drought and flood, by widespread loss of topsoil, by massive crop failure, and by the collapse of worldwide fishing industries."

"To a political mind, everything is politics."

"You can learn more about a person by watching them eat one meal than by listening to them speak for a whole day."

"When in doubt, follow the money trail. People could lie, motives could be disguised, even acts could be misunderstood. Money was as constant as human nature."

"He had defined intuition for Sondra: it was what remained after all the facts had been forgotten. But intuition could also be something else. Sometimes it was the subconscious mind, establishing deep connections long before the thinking part of the brain could explain them."

"He had achieved his objective, but his little inside voice would not keep quiet. Too easy, it said, much too easy. When a difficult goal is achieved with no effort, it’s time to be suspicious."

"“My aunt doesn’t even believe there is a Ship. She says we’ve been here on Pentecost forever.” “What did you tell her?” “Nothing. For someone with that view, logic is irrelevant—she’ll believe what she chooses, regardless of evidence. Her religion says God placed us here on Pentecost, and for her that’s the end of the argument.” “And you?” Peron was aware that she had moved in very close to him. “What do you think?” “You know what I think. I’m cursed with a logical mind, and a lot of curiosity.”"

"Everyone was polite; no one was happy."

"The partners were there; gravity was calling the changes, and the cosmic dance was ready to begin."

"Human culture is built around four basic elements: sexual relationships, territorial rights, individual intellectual dominance, and desire for group acceptance. The H’Sirin model using just these four traits as independent variables enables accurate prediction of human behavior patterns. On the basis of this, human culture is judged to be of Level Two, with few prospects for advancement to a higher level. —From the Universal Species Catalog (Subclass: Sapients)"

"When a person was so consistently wrong, it was time to give up having opinions."

"“I think I’ll have a sign made for that far wall,” said Bey at last. “Indeed?” “Yes. It will say, ‘If you have nothing to do, please don’t do it here’.”"

"The ship climbed steadily and laboriously up, away from the plane of the ecliptic. Finally, the parallax was sufficient to move the planets from their usual apparent positions. Mars, Earth, Venus, and Jupiter all sat in constellations that were no part of the familiar zodiac. Mercury was cowering close to the sun. Saturn alone, swinging out at the far end of her orbit, seemed right as seen from the ship. Bey Wolf, picking out their positions through a viewport, wondered idly how the astrologers would cope with such a situation. Mars seemed to be in the House of Andromeda, and Venus in the House of Cygnus. It would take an unusually talented practitioner to interpret those relationships and cast a horoscope for the success of this enterprise."

"“Hormones are everything, Turpin,” she said to the bird on her shoulder. “Brains are nice, and looks are nice, and logic’s even nicer; but hormones run the show. For everyone, even for me and you.”"

"We got the way we are, Jeanie, because life on Earth is one long fight for limited resources. Our bloody-mindedness all started out as food battles, three billion years ago."

"The first space colonies had been conceived as utopias, planned by Earth idealists who wouldn’t learn from history. New frontiers may attract visionaries, but more than that they attract oddities. Anyone who is more than three sigma away from the norm, in any direction, seems to finish out there on the frontier. No surprise in that. If a person can’t fit, for whatever reason, he’ll move away from the main group of humanity. They’ll push him, and he’ll want to go."

"It’s the usual sensation mongering; the news services will say anything for an effect."

"War was senseless. And yet war came creeping steadily closer."

"“Any great thoughts?”… “The younger generation are clearly unfitted to run the world, but one day they are going to do it anyway.”"

"I sometimes think that the only thing in life that I find truly irresistible is the challenge to finagle something that everyone else says can’t be done."

"Unfair to other students? Probably. I was not going to worry about that. Show me a totally impartial teacher, and I’ll show you a robot."

"But maybe we wrongly define the higher human functions. How we think and feel about everything except questions of pure logic is decided maybe five percent in our brains, ninety-five percent in our glands. And how many events in human history have been the result of logical thought? Just try to name one."

"It is very clear that nothing in nature presents such a danger to the human race is our own actions."

"The possible future is not just longer than the past. It is unimaginably longer."