Gregory Benford

"Puzzled frowns in the audience. Science reporters they might be, but high school chemistry was going a bit too deep for most."

"Nobody out here was going to find an alternative here to Earth’s tiresome clash of selfish individualisms and stifling collectivisms."

"She had always admired the way bureaucracies spontaneously produced leaden prose, blandly sliding from the mouths of people who absolutely believed everything they said."

"“Quite patently artificial,” she said. “Looks like it to me, and I’m just a physicist.” “I thought you were an engineer-pilot.” “Hey, physicists can do anything.” “Um. So they think. But not biology…”"

"“I think,” Jordin said mildly, “a professional biologist would label that aggressive behavior.”"

"Would an alien outsider judge America’s performance by My Lai and Wounded Knee or by Lincoln and Jefferson?"

"Definitions, her grandmother once said, had to be like a fat man’s belt—big enough to cover the subject but elastic enough to allow for change."

"Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them."

"Anyway, the Shanna woman was abrasive, self-obsessed, smug—and those were her good points. Julia suspected that in a pinch the woman might also be careless, the one sin reality never forgave."

"There was more known, but always more to be known. Yes, she thought, and the unknown can masquerade as the unknowable."

"They had a legend about a Chemical pinned to a piece of dead matter and allowed to die that way—Diminished to extinction! Apparently a commonplace among Chemicals. Yet after this fearsome loss, the identity emerged from its full subtraction—to claim life again. Such a desperate story! Elementary knowledge tells us that such things do not happen, of course."

"“Why paired?” Viktor asked. “Have two sexes?” “Hard to imagine how electromagnetic creatures could,” Mary Kay said. Viktor grinned. “Lack of imagination is not an argument. Especially lately.”"

"Better be a bit more diplomatic. Translation: cover your scientific ass."

"None of the above. That’s often the right answer, and bugger the exams."

"The evolutionary routes are many, she knew, wending through the howling wilderness of the maladaptive, on to their severely narrowed destinations. Biology abounded with convergent examples, destinations arrived at along very different paths. Fruiting bodies of slime molds and myxobacteria alike evolved multicelled advances. Warmbloodedness came forth several times, as did live birth and even penile tumescence. The eyes did indeed have it—as seen in the camera-like eyes of vertebrates and octopi, and the similar tiny preceptors of worms and jellyfish. Nature invented over and over again the mechanisms used by diverse organisms to hear, smell, echolocate, sense the prickle of electric and magnetic fields."

"But then, growing up was not supposed to be easy. One Mom remarked offhandedly, “It’s the toughest work you’ll ever do.”"

"Naturals felt best in groups of a hundred or so, and better if only a few dozen were involved. Hunting parties had been about that size, for the long-extinct big game. Many important institutions were of the same rough scale: the ancient village, governing councils of nations, commanding elites of vast armies, teams playing games, orchestras, family fests. All human enterprises that worked were of that size, and nearly everything that failed was not."

"In his view, the true deep human fantasy was the conviction of safety. Men believed their women were devoted; wives felt that their men were dependable. Both ignored contrary evidence."

"From birth it had integrated each experience with its innate sense of balance and appropriate scale—indeed, this was the sole purpose of its conscious being."

"For her it was a slippery descent into a labyrinth where twin urges fought, revenge versus survival. These two instincts, already ancient before the first hominid walked, rarely married with any security. Yet if she did not feel the pinch of their competition, she would not be, by her own judgment, a true human."

"“You humans have emotions,” Seeker said slowly, “but more often emotions have you.”"

"They all lived as ants in the shadow of mountains of millennia, and time’s sheer mass shaded every word."

"History held counterexamples to any facile rule."

"Good food was like sex, one of life’s blessings, but they both lost their edge when talked about too much."

"You need friends to keep you on your feet, and enemies to keep you on your toes."

"In any case, caution outweighed theory, as mice knew about elephants."

"“How can you shrug off history?”… “By studied neglect.”"

"Nothing is eternal—including prisons."

"Individual recollections of the past are easily shaped by others. After a while they need have little bearing on the once-lived events."

"The intellectual breeds of humans think in terms of abstractions. But most people have emotions and think they are having ideas."

"Seeker laughed. “You are so—well, human. You always think you are the ultimate.” “And…we’re not.” Seeker inspected the ceiling. “It seems unlikely.”"

"Uncompromising zeal doesn’t look in the mirror much."

"Curious, how any tool properly made acquires a beauty."

"While a gigantic amount has been written or spoken, culture in the end is the fraction that gets remembered."

"Propaganda of sufficient age became art."

"Great error, seen up close, can look like true greatness."

"Evolution was still at work, pruning the failures from the gene pool with unblinking patience."

"Weeds sprouted in spaces where once-important people had proclaimed that their presumptions were imperishable."

"“So many people, close-packed.” “Your kind apparently enjoys the crowding.” “I…I can sort of see why it might be exciting. Like a never-ending party.” Speaker grimaced. “Just the sort of horror I imagined, yes.”"

"Nature’s nature was change. It was not a museum."

"To us, most human morality is carefully thought-through self-congratulation."

"When you know nothing, you are free to hope."

"“The price of such seeing will be death,” Seeker said quietly. She blinked. “We’ve done fine so far.” “A numerical series can have many terms yet be finite.”"

"Quantum uncertainty, chaos—these forever screen precise knowledge of the future from our eyes."

"An animal that liked abstractions? Maybe that wasn’t all that bad a definition of being human."

"“He was guilty of the heresy of humanism.” “How can that be heresy?” “The narcissistic devotion to things human? ‘Man is the measure of all things?’ Easily.”"