Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,808 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Alastair Reynolds
259 quotes
“Some promises are best broken. Trust me on this: I’m a politician.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That was the universe: you could beat it once, you could float a message in a bottle across half of eternity, but the universe would always find a way to have the last laugh.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There’s still hope.” But a small, private voice said: there’s hope, and there’s desperation.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wish there was something we could do. But organised structure is the most precious thing in the universe. When it is lost, it is truly lost.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They screwed with democracy. I’m not going to lose much sleep when democracy screws them back.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing he said indicated that he was that angry. I mean, there’s a difference between angry and murderous. Isn’t there?” “Less than you’d think.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One trusted machines. But one never expected machines to return the favor.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m hoping no one will be quite that stupid,” Sparver said. “Then again, this is baseline humans we’re dealing with.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You are that rarest of creatures: a man with the wisdom to see beyond his own time.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m just saying that right now we could all use a degree of perspective. Because this is not the end of the world.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everything looked utterly normal, exactly as Thalia had expected save for the absence of a rampaging mob.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She’d walked a delicate line with commendable skill. But sometimes the best case wasn’t good enough.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m just saying...we can’t trust them. We’ve never been able to trust them. That’s always been a cornerstone of our operational policy.” “Then maybe it’s time we got a new cornerstone. They’re people, Lillian. They might be people who make us uncomfortable, people with very different values from ours, but when we’re facing local extinction at the hands of a genocidal machine intelligence, I don’t think the differences between us look massively significant, do you?”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was born in a house with a million rooms, built on a small, airless world on the edge of an empire of light and commerce that the adults called the Golden Hour, for a reason I did not yet grasp.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Are you threatening me, shatterling” “No, just indulging in a little wishful thinking.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No act of knowledge acquisition is entirely without risk.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If my years as a shatterling had taught me anything, it was that not all questions had answers. Societies had reduced themselves to radioactive dust because they could not accept that single unpalatable truth.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The problem was, although I was as certain as I could be that I was right, I could offer nothing to bolster my arguments.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We’re flexible,” Campion said. “It’s the price we pay for being sentient.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Civilisations beyond number had risen from obscurity, considering themselves masters of all creation, before fading back into the footnotes of history.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wonderful, isn’t it?” “Wonderful and a little spooky.” “Like all the best things in the universe.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m hearing a lot of reasons why someone wouldn’t hold a grudge against us,” Campion said. Betony looked sympathetic. “Then you misunderstand human nature, my dear fellow. People will hate us simply for being what we are: a force for good, for benign non-interference. The mere fact that we haven’t dirtied our hands, that we’ve maintained an unblemished reputation—that’s enough to make someone detest us.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People lived and died and did strange, pointless things to themselves. So did societies, be they city-sized states or galactic empires encompassing thousands of solar systems. Everything came and went, everything was new and bright with promise once and old and worn out later, and everything left a small, diminishing stain on eternity, a mark that time would eventually erase.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Open your story-cube on the way home and ask it to tell you about causality violation. I did once, because I asked the same question you did. Why should I be limited? What right does the universe have to say what I can and can’t do? I’m intelligent. The universe is just a lot of hydrogen and dirt, going through the motions. But in this instance the universe has the final say.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I felt a terrible sadness open inside me, a void through which the winds from the end of the universe were blowing.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There had been a human soul in that skull only a few hours earlier, and now no authority in the universe could bring her back. We were like monkeys sitting around a fire that had just extinguished, wondering why the warmth and light had gone away.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She was usually caught with her back to us, a distant figure standing on some cliff or high building with one hand on her hip and another shielding her eyes from the sun, lost in the rapture of scale and scenery, drunk on the very idea of being human, a monkey who had hit the big time.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sorry, Campion, but we can’t trust Lady Luck any more. Lately she’s taken to pissing on us from a great height.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They’re your children. The more you try to force them to be like you, the more they’re going to flare off in different directions like wild fireworks, the more they’re going to surprise and disappoint you.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Given the evidence at our disposal, only a fool would put any faith in the organic and the machine living harmoniously for the rest of time.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don’t you start. It’s bad enough that one of us feels he could have done more. We’re human, Campion—that’s all it boils down to. Human and not nearly as clever as we thought we were when it counted. End of story. When they put up the gravestone for our species, that’ll be the epitaph.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We were sowing so much misinformation that some of it came back and bit us.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you see us slavering for revenge, that most pointlessly biological of imperatives?”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have only your word for that.” “Yes,” the glass man said, “that’s rather the point. There’s going to have to be a lot more trust from this time forward. Why don’t we start as we mean to go on?”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They might have their airships and machine guns, but superstition wasn’t something that went away just because you had engines and bullets.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And you do not think that this is possible?” “I’ll believe in anything when I see evidence for it.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know what you’re feeling," Meroka said. “You’re thinking, this was my little adventure, it was all revolving around me. And now it’s not. You’re just a detail, swept up in the stuff she’s making happen. Welcome to the way most of us spend our lives feeling, Cutter. We’re just turds swirling our way down the pipe.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had you down as a xenophobic zealot,” Quillen said. “I didn’t realize you were also a sadist.” “We all have our hidden depths.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m not asking you to open your mind to all manner of nonsense, Doctor, merely to allow for the possibility of things you might previously have dismissed, or failed to give any consideration to whatsoever. Such as the fact that the world was not always this way, and by implication doesn’t have to be this way in the future.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This was a watering hole, and watering holes drew the hungry as well as the parched.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I take it you’re not a believer, Meroka?” “Are you?” “I don’t believe.” He paused theatrically. “In anything. I question. I doubt. I doubt and I doubt consistently and systematically. It’s called thinking scientifically.” “I hope you understand what the fuck that means,” Meroka said, because I sure don’t.” “I wouldn’t expect you to, my dear. The world isn’t exactly conducive to scientific thinking. Not in its present condition. But it’s changing, and so must we. Those of us who can, anyway.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We don’t have enough evidence to decide either way,” Ricasso said, “so for now we may as well keep open minds.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you think it means anything?” “Probably not," Ricasso said, wiping his dust-smeared hands on his knees. “I’m all for looking for meaning in ancient texts. But now and then you have to just accept the fact that you’re dealing with so much religious gibberish.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Welcome to politics, Doctor. We don’t get to pick our allies. The best we can hope for is that we don’t despise them quite as much as our enemies.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hopefully they’ll accept me for what I am, not what I was. That’s all we can ever hope for, isn’t it?”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was easy to sound that confident; less easy to believe it in his heart. They had got this far did not give them an automatic guarantee of success. The world did not work like that. It took pleasure in punishing the cocksure.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She was pointing into the empty, angel-less heavens beyond. Everything else. The universe.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What you encountered was an abomination, a military intelligence. It was designed to be insidious and spiteful and inimical to life, and it wasn’t smart enough to have a conscience.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She looked at him, marvelling. “Sometimes it’s as if you’re living a century behind the rest of us.” “Elephants don’t care what century it is. They care what season it is.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The air crackled with rivalry and the potential for swift backstabbing. Geoffrey hadn’t sensed anything like it since his last academic conference.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source