Poul Anderson

"No amount of money would stave off a nuclear warhead."

"It would annoy me less that we’re heading into a new puritanical era if the puritanism concerned itself about things that matter."

"“Well, I’ll try to sketch it out for you, but I’ll have to repeat stuff I’ve told you before.” “That’s all right. I’m a simon-pure layman. My basic thought habits were formed early in the Iron Age. Where it comes to science, I can use plenty of repetition.”"

"Something as biologically fundamental as death ought to be in the very fabric of evolution virtually from the beginning."

"“Evolution is cut-and-try. If I may anthropomorphize,” he added. “Often it’s hard not to.”"

"“‘Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.’ Yeah, trouble is, the three classes of people aren’t the same.”"

"We Russians have learned to fear anarchy above all else. We would rather have tyranny than it. Hanno, you do wrong to look on people’s republics, strong governments of every kind, as always evil. Freedom is perhaps better, but chaos is worse."

"Absolute proof of absolute knowledge is impossible."

"Are you happy? Your question is meaningless. I am occupied. I participate in operations, I am one with the accomplishments."

"“We do need something to lift us out of ourselves. It’s wrong to carry our pettinesses along to the stars.” “We will, though,” he said. “We can’t help it. How do you escape being what you are?”"

"I don’t pretend to understand what the physicists mean by time, but for people, it isn’t so-and-so many measured units; it’s events, experiences. A man who crowds his life and dies young has lived longer than one who got old sitting in tame sameness."

"Before the spirit could seek into it, the mind must. She studied the tensor equations as once she studied the sutras, she meditated upon the koans of science, and at last she began to feel her oneness with all that was, and in the vision find peace."

"What’s the point of our living all these centuries if we haven’t grown up even a little?"

"The universe held as many surprises as it did stars. No, more. That was its glory. But someday one of them was bound to kill you."

"I've heard assorted rhapsodies about humankind going to the stars, of course. Who hasn't? Each of them founders on the practical problems." "The fish that first ventured ashore had considerable practical problems."

"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."

"Anybody can find infinite Mandelbrot figures in his navel."

"All those agonizing philosophical-theological conundrums amount to "Ask a silly question, get a silly answer.""

"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."

"In Harvest of Stars, there is this notion, not original with me of course, that it will become possible to download at least the basic aspects of a human personality into a machine program..."

"So much American science fiction is parochial -- not as true now as it was years ago, but the assumption is one culture in the future, more or less like ours, and with the same ideals, the same notions of how to do things, just bigger and flashier technology. Well, you know darn well it doesn't work that way..."

"I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated."

"It isn’t possible to have equality. It’s been tried again and again in history, giving everybody a vote, and it’s always failed—always, in a few generations, the worse politicians drove out the better. Because by definition, half the people always have below-average intelligence; and the average is not high."

"I am a peaceful man, captain. I rely more on my cerebral cortex than my guns."

"For the ordinary man, instability—change—means dislocation, war, uncertainty, misery, and death."

"It sounds rather silly, doesn’t it? One little man thinking he can change history all by his lonesome. A lot of trouble has been caused by that delusion."

"People usually take for granted that the way things are is the way things must be."

"Then they died. And other men came after them. Wars flamed up and burned out; the howling peoples dwelt in smashed cities and kindled their fires with books."

"Her rank was higher than his, so high that no one in her family worked productively."

"Winter lay among the Outer Hebrides. Day was a sullen glimmer between two darknesses, often smothered in snow. When it did not fling itself upon the rocks and burst in freezing spume, the North Atlantic rolled in heavy and gnawing. There was no real horizon; leaden waves met leaden sky and misty leaden light hid the seam."

"I do not think the coerced mind ever really learns an art."

"Pioneering is an unlimited chance to become the biggest frog, provided the puddle is small enough."

"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."

"Life was too short for anything but amusement at the human race."

"“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.”"

"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?"

"Li-Tsung of Krasna would have told him to live at all costs, sacrifice all the others, to save himself for his planet and the Fellowship. But there were limits. You didn’t have to accept Dave’s Calvinism—though its unmerciful God seemed very near this dead star—to swallow the truth that some things were more important than survival. Than even the survival of a cause. Maybe I’m trying to find out what those things are, he thought confusedly."

"You can have more adventure in an hour’s walk through a forest than in a year on a spaceship."

"I’m afraid I’m not a convert or anything. I still see the same blind cosmos governed by the same blind laws. But suddenly it matters. It matters terribly, and means something. What, I haven’t figured out yet. I probably never will. But I have a reason for living, or for dying if need be. Maybe that’s the whole purpose of life: purpose itself. I can’t say. But I expect to enjoy the world a lot more."

"“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.”"

"“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.”"

"On our Earth, we’ve perforce learned all the knavery there is to know."

"It was lonely, not even knowing yourself."

"What, after all, what is the most logical way for superman to evolve? Not in one fantastic mutation of unknown thousands of genes all working to produce the same results: the very formulation was an insult to the laws of probability. No, homo superior should have evolved from homo sapiens in the same way that other species had evolved from a parent stock—by isolation of a few not very different mutations, selection and intensification of the new traits, new mutations gradually appearing and being lost if they were unfavorable, being incorporated if they gave some advantage."

"Holger wished he had read the old tales more closely; he had only a dim childhood recollection of them."

"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."

"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."

"“But your sign says you can conjure up ever-filled purses,” Holger began. “Advertising,” Martinus admitted. “Corroborative detail intended to lend artistic verisimilitude.”"

"You cannot imagine how wearisome existence grows, alone and immortal."

"And never forget: any planet is a world, as complex and mysterious in its own right, as full of its patterns and contradictions and histories, as Earth ever was."