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David Brin
149 quotes
“I hate the whole übermensch, superman temptation that pervades science fiction. I believe no protagonist should be so competent, so awe-inspiring, that a committee of 20 really hard-working, intelligent people couldn't do the same thing.”
David Brin (born 1950) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview in Locus (March 1997)
“The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.”
David Brin (born 1950) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Contrarian Perspective on Altruism : The Dangers of First Contact (September 2002), p. 22
“Learn to control ego. Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic! But we all need criticism. Criticism is the only known antidote to error.”
David Brin (born 1950) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview de David Brin" at ActuSF.com (March 2008)
“Blatant idiocies had been tried by early men and women—foolishness that would never have been considered by species aware of the laws of nature. Desperate superstitions had bred during the savage centuries. Styles of government, intrigues, philosophies were tested with abandon. It was almost as if Orphan Earth had been a planetary laboratory, upon which a series of senseless and bizarre experiments were tried.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where there is mind, there is always solution,” Keneenk taught. All problems contained the elements of their answer.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What point was there in pursuing an ever-elusive popularity?”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You don’t have conversations with microprocessors. You tell them what to do, then helplessly watch the disaster when they take you literally!”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Words penetrated the tank from the outer room. They were tantalizing, like those ghosts of meaning in a great symphony—hinting that the composer had caught a glimpse of something notes could only vaguely convey and words could never even approach.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He wasn’t afraid of dying, only of having not done all he could, and not properly spitting in the eye of death when it came for him. That final gesture was important.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was better to imagine a sacrifice being for something.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He read about humanity’s age-old racial struggles. Had it really been less than half a millennium since humans contrived gigantic, fatuous lies about each other simply because of pigment shades, and killed millions because they believed their own lies?”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Petals floating by, Drift through my woman’s hand, As she remembers me.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are having extreme difficulty with local gangs of “Survivalists.” Fortunately, these infestations of egotists are mostly too paranoid to band together. They’re as much trouble to each other as to us, I suppose. Still, they are becoming a real problem.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Apparently, the Fates were not so unsubtle as to deal him another blow just yet. He knew they didn’t operate that way. They always let you hope for a while longer, then strung it out before they really let you have it.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Survivalists. Gordon felt a wave of revulsion.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He tried again, but their sullen, rural obstinacy was impervious to logic.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He managed to lie by implication while speaking words that were the literal truth, a skill he had grown good at, if not proud of.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s clear that male human beings should never have been left in control of the world all these centuries. Many of you are wonderful beyond belief, but too many others will always be bloody lunatics. Your sex is simply built that way. Its better side gave us power and light, science and reason, medicine and philosophy. Meanwhile the dark half spent its time dreaming up unimaginable hells and putting them into practice.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How did he get away with pushing a book like this? How is it anyone ever believed him?” Gordon shrugged. “It was called ‘the Big Lie’ technique, Johnny. Just sound like you know what you’re talking about—as if you’re reciting facts. Talk very fast. Weave your lies into the shape of a conspiracy theory and repeat your assertions over and over again. Those who want an excuse to hate or blame—those with big but weak egos—will leap at a simple, neat explanation for the way the world is. Those types will never call you on the facts.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How can we set up a system which encourages individuals to strive and excel, and yet which shows some compassion to the weak, and weeds out madmen and tyrants?”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course we can establish constitutional checks and balances, but those won’t mean a thing unless citizens make sure the safeguards are taken seriously. The greedy and the power-hungry will always look for ways to break the rules, or twist them to their advantage.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s said that “power corrupts,” but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable.”
David Brin (born 1950) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Values of the Wise: Humanity's Highest Aspirations (2004) by Jason Merchey, p. 120
“Freedom was wonderful beyond relief. But with it came that bitch, Duty.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They accepted warriors...” he emphasized, “...That divinely mad type that’s so valuable when needed, and such a problem when it’s not.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All legends must be based on lies, Gordon realized. We exaggerate, and even come to believe the tales, after a while.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The same was true of the most popular girls. They had no empathy, no compassion for more normal kids.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was silly to suppose that trials only hardened men, automatically making them wise. He knew many who were stupid, arrogant, and mean, in spite of having suffered.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A neurosis defends itself by coming up with rationalizations to explain away bizarre behavior.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A sane being wished for peace and serenity, not to be the mortar in which the ingredients of destiny are finely ground.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She had called in the debt that parents owe a child for bringing her, unasked, into a strange world. One should never make an offer without knowing full well what will happen if it is accepted.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was, after all, a diplomat, and understood that the best and firmest deals are based on open self-interest.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“After all,” he muttered, “what can they do to shake the confidence of a fellow who’s got delusions of adequacy?”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is a lovely world,” he sighed. “And yet it has suffered horror. Sometimes, so-called civilization seems bent on destroying those very things which it is sworn to protect.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Had I been wrong, this would still have been the honorable thing to do. I am very glad, however, to find out that I was right.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is not fair...Anyone who says it is, or even that it ought to be, is a fool or worse.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A hallmark of sanity, Alex, is the courage to face even unpleasant points of view.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Apocalypses, apparently, are subject to fashion like everything else. What terrifies one generation can seem obsolete and trivial to the next. Take our modern attitude toward war. Most anthropologists now think this activity was based originally on theft and rape—perhaps rewarding enterprises for some caveman or Viking, but no longer either sexy or profitable in the context of nuclear holocaust! Today, we look back on large-scale warfare as an essentially silly enterprise.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We can’t save the world without food. Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anyone who tries to predict the future is inevitably a fool. Present company included. A prophet without a sense of humor is just stupid.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was a queer, disturbing instant of recognition. We all create monsters in our minds. The only important difference may be which of us let our monsters become real.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You think I'm kidding?” the pilot asked. “No, we think you're crazy.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What was it like, he wondered, to care about something so passionately? He suspected it made her somehow more alive than he was.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It had been different during his first year of graduate school, when he temporarily forsook physics to explore instead the realm of the senses. Applying logic to the late-blooming quandries of maturity, he had parsed the elements of encounter, banter, negotiation, and consummation, separating and solving the variables one by one until the problem—if not generally solved—did appear to have tractable special solutions.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The good side of the world media village was the sense it gave ten billion that each of them had at least some small connection with the whole. The bad side was that no one ever encountered anything, anymore, that was completely new.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From you, my boy, I expect no less than the completely preposterous and utterly calamitous.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She closed her eyes. And while her intellect wouldn’t let her realize her deepest fear, that all this might soon be gone forever, nevertheless she stood there for a time and worshipped the only way a person like her could worship—in silence and solitude, under the temple of the sky.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ideologies are too seductive anyway. It does a man good to see things from a different point of view.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source