David Brin

"One of life’s joys was to have friends who gave you reality checks...who would call you on your crap before it rose so high you drowned in it."

"“All this talk of using tax policy to ‘assess social costs’...what a dumb idea. The only way to stop polluters is to put them against walls and shoot them.”"

"Ideologies are too seductive anyway. It does a man good to see things from a different point of view."

"There’s no urgency, a third voice urged, pleading compromise. No duty calls. Hold onto the illusion a little longer. So she tried to go on pretending. After all, can’t believing sometimes make dreams come true? No, it can’t. Besides, you're awake now."

"They saw the end coming, he thought, looking down the file of awful figures. But they were dead wrong about the reasons why. They assumed only gods had the power to wreak such havoc on their world, but people caused the devastation here. Alex felt compassion for the ancient Pasquans—but a superior sort nevertheless. In blaming gods, they had conveniently diverted censure from the real culprit. The designer of weapons. The feller of trees. The destroyer. Man himself."

"Prison for the crime of puberty—that was how secondary school had seemed, when he really thought back on it."

"Daisy had learned not to pay much heed to techno-fads. To her fell the task of preserving as much as possible, so that when humanity finally did fall, it wouldn’t take everything else to the grave with it."

"On this occasion, despite the wind and sparkling stars, they looked just like huge chunks of stone, pathetically chiseled by desperate folk to resemble stern gods. People did bizarre things when they were afraid...as most men and women had been for nearly all the time since the species evolved."

"The lesson they took home with them was simple; it takes a full belly before a man or woman gives a tinker’s damn about anything as large as a planet."

"“Huh,” Sepak thought, marveling how much one could learn by just sitting still and observing. It wasn’t a skill one learned in the frenetic pace of modern society."

"What kind of man takes a live bomb across the seas in order to blow up other people? People who have mothers and lovers and children, just like him? Probably either a professional or a patriot, Alex thought. Or, worse, both."

"Knowledge isn’t restrained by the limits of Malthus. Information doesn’t need topsoil to grow in, only freedom. Given eager minds and experimentation, it feeds itself like a chain reaction."

"Nation states are archaic leftovers from when each man feared the tribe over the hill, an attitude we can’t afford anymore."

"Look at all the happiest, sanest people you've known, Nelson. Really listen to them. I bet you'll find they don’t fear a little inconsistency or uncertainty now and then. Oh, they try always to be true to their core beliefs, to achieve their goals and keep their promises. Still, they also avoid too much rigidity, forgiving the occasional contradiction and unexpected thought. They are content to be many."

"Nelson replayed his last musings to himself, and silently laughed. Listen to you! Jen was right. You're a born philosopher. In other words, full of shit."

"It also became clear why the nations were expected to commence major space enterprises. Henceforth, the raw materials for industrial civilization were to be taken from Earth’s lifeless sisters, not the mother world. All mines currently being gouged through Terra’s crust were to be phased out within a generation and no new ones started. Henceforth, Earth must be preserved for the real treasures—its species—and man would have to look elsewhere for mere baubles like gold or platinum or iron."

"The man talked, but somehow nothing he said seemed to make any sense."

"History and geology show what an eyeblink it’s been since our current, comfortable culture came about. And yet that culture is using up absolutely everything at a ferocious rate."

"Beware of assumptions that seem “obvious” in one decade. They may become quaint in the next."

"Some smart moves were little more than nicely padded traps."

"Intelligence is loose in the galaxy. Power is in our hands, for better or worse. We can modify Nature’s rules, if we dare, but we cannot ignore her lessons."

"At her station in life, wisdom dictated keeping a low profile. And yet..."

"It could be worse. I can’t think how right now, but I’m sure it could be worse."

"Maia lifted her gaze to watch low clouds briefly occult a brightly speckled, placid sea, its green shoals aflicker with silver schools of fish and the flapping shadows of hovering swoop-birds. The variegated colors were lush, voluptuous. Mixing with scents carried by the moist, heavy wind, they made a stew for the senses, spiced with fecund exudates of life. The beauty was heavy-handed, adamantly consoling. She got the point—that life goes on."

"There was that word quaint again. It seemed to refer patronizingly to anything simple or backward, from the viewpoint of a city-bred tourist."

"You can’t fight biology. Only push at the rules, here and there."

"We are programmed to find sex pleasurable for one simple reason—because animals who mate have offspring. Those who do not mate have none. Traits that result in successful reproduction get reinforced and passed on. Evolution is that simple. It is therefore useless to bemoan as evil the fact that men tend toward aggression. Among our ancestors, aggression often helped males have more offspring than their competitors. “Good” and “evil” had little to do with it. That is, until we reached consciousness, at which point, good and evil became pertinent indeed! Behaviors which might be excusable in dumb beasts can seem perverted, criminal, when performed by thinking beings. Just because a trait is “natural” does not oblige us to keep it."

"One great mystery is why sexual reproduction became dominant for higher life-forms. Optimization theory says it should be otherwise. Take a fish or lizard, ideally suited to her environment, with just the right internal chemistry, agility, camouflage—whatever it takes to be healthy, fecund, and successful in her world. Despite all this, she cannot pass on her perfect characteristics. After sex, her offspring will be jumbles, getting only half of their program from her and half their re-sorted genes somewhere else. Sex inevitably ruins perfection. Parthenogenesis would seem to work better—at least theoretically. In simple, static environments, well-adapted lizards who produce duplicate daughters are known to have advantages over those using sex. Yet, few complex animals are known to perform self-cloning. And those species exist in ancient, stable deserts, always in close company with a related sexual species. Sex has flourished because environments are seldom static. Climate, competition, parasites—all make for shifting conditions. What was ideal in one generation may be fatal the next. With variability, your offspring get a fighting chance. Even in desperate times, one or more of them may have what it takes to meet new challenges and thrive. Each style has its advantages, then. Cloning offers stability and preservation of excellence. Sex gives adaptability to changing times. In nature it is usually one or the other. Only lowly creatures such as aphids have the option of switching back and forth."

"Loneliness, her arch enemy, never seemed content."

"Piss on the world, or it’ll piss on you."

"What hope has any endeavor which is based on hate and fear?"

"The heritage we give our children, and the myths we leave to sustain them, must work with the tug and press of life, or they will fail. Adaptability has to be enshrined alongside stability, or the ghost of Darwin will surely come back to haunt us, whispering in our ears the penalty of conceit. We wish our descendants happiness. But over time one criterion alone will judge our efforts. Survival."

"Maia recognized a look of true religion in the other woman’s eyes. A version and interpretation that conveniently justified what had already been decided."

"Wisdom. No match for the troublemaker Curiosity."

"“Life is the continuation of existence, yet no thing endures. We are all patterns, seeking to propagate. Patterns which bring other patterns into being, then vanish, as if we’ve never been.”"

"The notions she fought with needed more than the simple algebra she’d been grudgingly taught at Lamai Hold. More and more she resented how they had robbed her of this, arguably her one talent, driving her from math and other abstractions by the simple expedient of making them seem boring."

"Cultural contamination that is directed outward is always seen as “enlightenment.”"

"But it’s not so hard, learning to picture yourself as part of a great chain. One that began long before you, and will go on long after."

"“All right,” she said. “You’ve convinced me. Men are good for something, after all.”"

"How far do we owe loyalty to our creators’ dream? When have we earned the right to dream for ourselves?"

"“It’s magic,” the chief cook concluded, in awe. ”No, not magic,” the ship’s doctor replied. “It’s much more. It’s mathematics.”"

"In the end, both extremes had more in common with each other than either did with the middle."

"Is there an inverse relation between knowledge and wisdom? At times it seems the more we know, the less we understand. I am not the first to note this quandary. One scholar recently wrote, “Lysos and her followers chase the siren call of pastoralism, like countless romantics before them, idealizing a past Golden Age that never was, pursuing a serenity possible only in the imagination.”"

"They say survival is Nature’s only form of flattery."

"Naroin stopped, shook her head. “Take it from an experienced hand, child. It’s no good blamin’ yourself for what you couldn’t prevent. Not so long as you tried.” Maia’s lips pressed together. That was exactly what she had been telling herself. From the look in Naroin’s eyes, it didn’t get much more believable as you got older."

"I’d rather be dead than so suspicious I can’t trust anybody."

"I’m learning, Maia thought. They keep making mistakes and I keep getting stronger. At this rate, someday I may actually gain control over my life."

"“I thought they were very good at what they did.” ”Of course they were good!” Brill glanced sharply. “The issue is what one chooses to be good at. The arts are fine, for hobbies. I play six instruments, myself. But they pose no great challenge to a mature mind.”"

"A dragon’s inertia is not shifted by yanking its tail."

"As in elections, the law pretended universal rights, while securing the interests of powerful houses."