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Charles Sheffield
193 quotes
“Theories were a dime a dozen. The partition that separated science and wishful thinking was evidence: observations and firm facts.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science wasn’t a show-business talent, conducted in large halls and decided by audience applause.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How did you do that?” The Hymenopt inclined her head. “With respect, Professor Lang, great intellectual power, even at the level you possess it, is not always a substitute for humble practical experience.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“His sin was something that scientists had done for thousands of years. Scientists didn’t usually change data, not unless they were outright charlatans. But when facts didn’t agree with theory, there was an awful temptation to find reasons for rejecting the offending data and and hanging on to the theory. Ptolemy had done it. Newton had done it. Darwin had done it. Einstein had done so explicitly.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Trouble comes in a thousand different ways. Not usually anything you expect, either. That’s why it’s trouble.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Didn’t anything scare the two aliens? Sometimes she wondered if humans were the only beings in the universe with a sense of cowardice (be charitable, and call it and instinct for self-preservation).”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He realized a profound truth: there is no one so generous as a bureaucrat spending other people’s money.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One form of insanity bears the name curiosity.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Logic was good, but too much logical analysis inhibited action. Darya had heard it seriously suggested that the original human cladeworld, Earth, had degenerated to an ineffectual backwater of a planet because computer trade-off analysis had increasingly been used as the basis for decision making. On purely logical grounds, no one would ever explore, invent, rejoice, sing, strive, fall in love, or take physical and psychological risks of any kind. Better to stay in bed in the morning; it was much safer.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When a person was so consistently wrong, it was time to give up having opinions.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing in life produce a more powerful joy than a near miss by the Angel of Death.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was a professional trouble-shooter. That was a fancy name for an idiot.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Improbable as it seems, I think she admires you more than me.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“His mind was as furiously active as his hormones.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Happy endings were for children’s stories and fool. You live in misery, and then you die. Life, by definition, was not designed to end happily. Louis continued aft. No happy ending, then. That was a fact, certain as death itself. He was living at the moment in a dream, an imagined world where everything went right. But—dreams are real while they last. Could you say more of life? A dream sequence was no more than a happy interlude, but maybe a happy interlude could last for an awful long time.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Somehow he felt more resigned than surprised. Things had been going far too well for far too long. Just when you thought you had the universe by the tail, it turned round and bit you on the ass.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you have something to do, do it. When you have nothing to do, sleep.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you wanted to get yourself killed, there was no better way than to think you knew all the tricks. It took experience to make you realize that the universe could always pull another one out of the bag and throw it at you.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As you will one day discover, a leader is not a leader because of the way that he or she behaves. He is a leader only because of the way that he is treated by others.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do not like to concatenate implausibilities.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Idle wishing for circumstances different from what you had was a waste of time.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you had little or no information, it was unreasonable to have any expectations. But somehow you did, even if they were often wrong.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Arabella Lund had been full of “rules,” and one of her most basic was this: Anything in the universe can happen once, or at least it can seem to happen. If you want to obtain information, make it happen again.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You crazy? You’ve got me confused with a guy who cares about other people.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That’s a whole lot of ifs you got there.” “True. But which would you prefer, Louis Nenda?” Atvar H’sial rose from her crouched position. “A substantial set of contingent possibilities, or a single unpleasant certainty?”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don’t get caught again. Never, never, never. That was the Golden Rule, the only important rule.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes I think about dying. And then I wonder about going to hell. And then I think that if and when I go there, the place will be completely organized and run by lost souls, with a council and a works committee and an ethics panel, and I’ll feel right at home.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who should run the world? There’s no easy answer, no magic solution. There never is, to a really hard question.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In any civilized society, it is the individual or group who creates a problem that must have responsibility for solving it.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the old words of wisdom, you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, and that’s usually enough to get by.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I find that prayers don’t work when you need them most. Unless you answer them for yourself.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Intelligence is too subtle an attribute to be inferred from appearance.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We both know that actions taken from internal conviction are far better motivated than any external commands.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Violence is never the only solution.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Never get involved in a venture with a man who inherited his money and didn’t earn any himself. He’ll assume he’s smarter than you are, just because he’s rich and you’re not, and he’ll expect you to bow down to his greatness because for all his life people have.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Korin stared. It must be a novelty, finding someone more paranoid than he was.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He had written the man off completely, and now here came common sense and a talent for improvisation. Maybe you didn’t have to be an idiot just because you were rich.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was the classic question; you had two tasks to perform and one promised to be much harder and more unpleasant than the other. Did you tackle the tough one first and get it out of the way? Or did you postpone, and hope that before you came to the hard part you might be struck by a meteorite, or that a solar flare would wipe out life in the solar system?”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It had been designed for “peacekeeping,” which meant that it had been fitted out from stem to stern with the most hideous weapons of war that the human mind could conceive.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only the final choice would require a human decision: enter the Link, or decline to do so? It occurred to Chan that perhaps this was the choice that humans were least qualified to make. He recognized in himself the tendency to say, we’ve come so far, we can’t possibly change our minds now. People following that philosophy died climbing mountains, they signed disastrous contracts, they flew into hurricanes, and they embarked on lifelong commitments to the wrong mates. Perhaps they headed to the stars for the same reason.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I learned a long time ago that it’s a bad habit to waste effort counting your friends. It’s your enemies you need to look out for.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was improbable for him to meet his old friends here? Fine, so it was improbable; but it had happened. “Improbable” was something you could only apply to future events.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’ll say only this: if we’re going to throw the idea of the Big Bang overboard, we won’t have much left of current astrophysics and cosmology.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Data are not the same as information. Before you can get the answers you want, you have to ask the right question.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any other instructions?” “Not without breaking one of my own golden rules. In an unpredictable situation, the man or woman on the spot should make the decisions, not the general sitting on his ass a million miles away from the action.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Decisions based on incomplete information are one thing, a fact of political life. Decisions made with no information are another.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A thousand friends have less weight than a single enemy.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Forrest Singer, it always seemed to Saul, spoke as though the two of them were equals. Saul possibly held the slightly inferior position in the doctor’s eyes. Saul was the President of the United States, true; but Forrest Singer was an M.D.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When hard times come to the party, dignity is one of the first guests to leave.”
Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source