Editors From The United States

"A big advantage of the serial-number approach to identity is that things stay the same even as they change."

"How can we measure the effects if we can't even count the dead to the nearest million?"

"The condensation of all property in the hands of one individual is an economic catastrophe-something like the formation of a black hole in astrophysics. It's obviously bad news for the majority of the people, who are left penniless. But even if you happen to be the big winner, your victory may prove hollow. Although you have all the riches in the world, you can't buy a thing, because no one else has goods to sell."

"After a few more centuries, perhaps the poorest billion will even be able to afford the $10.00 buffet."

"The fact that randomness requires a physical rather than a mathematical source is noted by almost everyone who writes on the subject, and yet the oddity of this situation is not much remarked."

"Compared with the elegant inventions of the theorists, nature's code seemed a bit of a kludge."

"It's all done with gears. Also pinions, snails, arbors; pawls and ratchets; and cam followers; cables, levers, bell cranks, and pivots."

"The fact is, winding and dusting and fixing somebody else's clock is boring."

"If saving human lives is the great desideratum, then there is more to be gained by the prevention of drowning, and auto wrecks than by the abolition of war."

"Fretting about a dearth of randomness seems like worrying that humanity might use up its last reserves of ignorance."

"I discovered that the computer is not like the violin; it doesn't take inborn genius or a lifetime of practice to get sweet music out of it."

"A retired physicist reading the Encyclopedia Britannica can do just so much toward securing world peace."

"A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students."

"Millions for defense, but not one cent for survival."

"“Damn you!" Dagenham raged, “Don’t you realize that you can’t trust people? They don’t know enough for their own good.” “Then let them learn or die. We’re all in this together. Let’s live or die together.”"

"“Wait,” Foyle commanded. He looked at the beaming grin engraved in the steel robot face. “But society can be so stupid. So confused. You’ve witnessed this conference.” “Yes, sir, but you must teach, not dictate. You must teach society.” “To space-jaunte? Why? Why reach out to the stars and galaxies? What for?” “Because you’re alive, sir. You might as well ask: Why is life? Don’t ask about it. Live it.” “Quite mad,” Dagenham muttered. “But fascinating,” Y’ang-Yeovil murmured. “There’s got to be more to life than just living,” Foyle said to the robot. “Then find it for yourself, sir. Don’t ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts.” “Why can’t we all move forward together?” “Because you’re all different. You’re not lemmings. Some must lead, and hope that the rest will follow.” “Who leads?” “The men who must … driven men, compelled men.” “Freak men.” “You’re all freaks, sir. But you always have been freaks. Life is a freak. That’s its hope and glory.” “Thank you very much.” “My pleasure, sir.”"

"“That’s me,” he said, motioning to the robot. “That’s all of us. We prattle about free will, but we’re nothing but response...mechanical reaction in prescribed grooves.”"

"Powell repressed the wave of exasperation that rose up in him. It was not exasperation with Chooka. It was anger for the relentless force of evolution that insisted on endowing man with increased powers without removing the vestigial vices that prevented him from using them."

"He awoke. He was alive. He wasted no time on prayer or thanks but continued the business of survival."

"“Neither of us is very trustworthy, eh?” “Pfutz!” Reich said emphatically. “We don’t play girl’s rules. We play for keeps, both of us. It’s the cowards and weaklings and sore-losers who hide behind rules and fair play.” “What about honor and ethics?” “We’ve got honor in us, but it’s our own code...not the make-believe rules some frightened little man wrote for the rest of the frightened little men. Every man’s got his own honor and ethics, and so long as he sticks to ’em, who’s anybody else to point the finger? You may not like his ethics, but you've no right to call him unethical.”"

"We always do what’s natural, only sometimes we shouldn’t do it."

"Now, these men weren’t idiots. They were geniuses who paid a high price for their genius because the rest of their thinking was other-world. A genius is someone who travels to truth by an unexpected path. Unfortunately, unexpected paths lead to disaster in everyday life."

"This is my first satellite, and d’you know what it's taught me? There’s just one component in any spacecraft that’s guaranteed to give trouble all the time: scientists!"

"Yes, no matter how we defend ourselves against the outside we’re always licked by something from the inside. There’s no defense against betrayal, and we all betray ourselves."

"The mind is the reality. You are what you think."

"Revenge is for dreams...never for reality."

"The man who gives his own decisions priority over society is a criminal."

"But the fact is I don’t care. I haven’t cared since I came here, and I will continue not to care until I leave. With as much of Ambergris smoldering behind me as I can manage."

"I had learned so much about the world that I had decided to withdraw from it."

"Who had the bigger burden? The one who had to watch the other person endure or the one who endured?"

"They’ll never forget, never forgive, no matter who the enemy is, son. Better just to start a new life. Be someone else."

"Maybe once, early on, he had convinced himself he could do some good, sometimes even imagined he was a mole, getting close so he could strike a blow. Imagined he was in it to defend Ambergris from the enemies that surrounded it. Imagined he was protecting ordinary citizens. But the truth was he’d been tired, had stopped caring. Broken down from too much fighting, too many things connected to his past. And when that spark, that impulse, had returned, it was too late: he was trapped."

"Strange, but when he closed his eyes he had an image of the hotel above them restored to its former grandeur. A concierge and porter in the lobby. Someone behind the desk waiting to take his key. Sintra in an evening gown. They’d be about to take a motored vehicle to the opera. The streets would be busy with merchants and people coming home from work. The buildings, the storefronts, would be bright and cheery with lights. Like it had been in those mayfly beautiful moments between wars, before the Rising."

"It looked like lively abstract art. Symbols in search of context."

"It is the nature of the writer to question the validity of his world and yet rely on his senses to describe it. From what other tension can great literature be born?"

"It closely resembles the situation that exists within a mental institution: in tight quarters, in similar garb, dissimilar minds attempt to build a consensus reality that, with a monumental effort of empathy, cannot—can never!—take concrete form."

"A fresh river in a beautiful meadow Imagined in his mind The good Painter, who would some day paint it"

"I could not move or speak for several minutes, frozen in the belief that the book itself had changed and was now writing me."

"The city might be savage, stray dogs might share the streets with grimy urchins whose blank eyes reflected the knowledge that they might soon be covered over, blinded forever, by the same two pennies just begged from some gentleman, and no one in the fuming, fulminous boulevards of trade might know who actually ran Ambergris—or, if anyone ran it at all, but, like a renegade clock, it ran on and wound itself heedless, empowered by the insane weight of its own inertia, the weight of its own citizenry."

"Unlike the Cult of the Seven-Edged Star, the Church of the Seven Pointed Star believed that God had seven points rather than seven edges. Therefore, rather than worshipping the journey toward self-realization symbolized by the edges, they worshipped the goals of self-realization as symbolized by the points. [...] Adherents to the Church of the Seven-pointed Star used swords with sharp points but no edge, while the Cult of the Seven-Edged Star used swords with sharp edges but no point. Alas, edges proved superior to points in most battles fought in the streets of Nicea. Caroline's followers were forced to either commit sacrilege and switch to edges, or become meals for the ever-present saltwater buzzard. Proving, one could say, the point of the edges."

"An inordinate love of ritual can be harmful to the soul, unless, of course, in times of great crisis, when ritual can protect the soul from fracture."

"When they give you things, ask yourself why. When you're grateful to them for giving you the things you should have anyway, ask yourself why."

"You are born supernaturally through faith, by the grace of God, into the kingdom of righteousness; but you are born a little babe, that is all; and if you make any progress from that point on, it must be by work, by sacrifice, by the practice of Christian virtues, by benevolence, by self-denial, by resisting the adversary, by making valiant war for God and against sin; and on no other basis, am I authorized in giving you a hope that you may come to manhood in Christ Jesus."

"The best teachers of humanity are the lives of great men."

"A man may make his way across the Atlantic in a skiff, for all I know; but if you are intending to cross the sea, take my advice, and secure passage in a first-class steamer, and you will be more likely to get there. So it is with these heathen millions. I do not know but some of them may drift, and we shall find them in the city of God. But I do know that by giving them the gospel, by building up and supporting among them a Christian church, we shall greatly multiply their chances for heaven."

"Religions which depend upon arguments are failures. A religion, to be aggressive, must be experimental; men must be something and do something by means of it, which would be otherwise impossible; then they become both rhetoric and logic — persuasion and proof."

"Remember, there are only a few model preachers. We have read of only one perfect Model, and He was crucified many centuries ago."

"The selfish man cuts away the sand from under his own feet, he digs his own grave; and every time, from the beginning of the world until now, God Almighty pushes him into the grave and covers him up."

"Broadly, the Long Tail is about abundance. Abundant shelf space, abundant distribution, abundant choice."

"Remember, in the tyranny of physical space, an audience too thinly spread is the same as no audience at all."