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Harry Turtledove
400 quotes
“Fiction has to be plausible. All history has to do is happen.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview at the World Science Fiction Convention (25 June 1998)
“Many things are possible. Few things are certain.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview in Cybling (February 2001)
“I see people who write characters who are loonies and make them convincing and believable, and I envy them tremendously. I don’t really understand them. It’s funny, because I’ve created my own monster. In the ‘Great War’ and ‘American Empire’ books, I’m writing the person who is the functional equivalent of Adolf Hitler. I’m inside his head — and that’s a very strange place for somebody who thinks of himself as a fairly rational fellow to be. That’s alarming.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Jake Featherston in an interview with Locus magazine (February 2003)
“I suspect S.F. has an individualistic, antiauthoritarian trend to it not least because so many of the people who read and write it (not all by any means, but quite a few) are innerdirected introverts who make neither good leaders nor good followers. Am I talking about myself? Well, now that you mention it, yes. But I ain’t the only one, not even close.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tor's Worlds Without Death or Taxes (December 2008)
“Some people blame the devil to keep from owning up to their shortcomings.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whether the bear beats the lion or the lion the bear, the rabbit always loses.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Dr.] Riario’s laugh was harsh. “I hate smallpox, and even more I hate being helpless against it. If it’s God’s curse as they say, why, I curse God back for it.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why?” he cried, a groan that filled the room. “Ask God when you come before Him in judgment,” Riario said. “I intend to. He’d best have a good answer, too, or I’ll make Him pay. One day I had a wife I loved, two daughters I couldn’t afford to dowry, and a face I didn’t mind seeing in a mirror. A couple of weeks later…”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Research seemed a more profitable way to spend his time than mourning.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am not especially wise, but I am especially stubborn.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As riots have a way of doing, this one was rapidly outgrowing the incident that had spawned it.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Holy Spirit will guide the assembled fathers to the truth,” the magistrianos said confidently. Being a veteran of years of bureaucratic infighting, he added, “Of course, we may have to help things along a bit.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beauty was too rare in the world to be wasted.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“His eyes were black and shiny; he had somehow the air of a man who saw things no one else did. Whether those things were actually there, Argyros was not sure.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was, he remembered, far more to love than what went on in bed, but that had its place too.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mobs,” Corippus said scornfully. “The bravest bastards in the world, till somebody fights back.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He’s had less use for me outside the bedchamber since I stopped telling him things he wanted to hear.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Robert E. Lee paused to dip his pen once more in the inkwell. Despite flannel shirt, uniform coat, and heavy winter boots, he shivered a little. The headquarters tent was cold. The winter had been harsh, and showed no signs of growing any milder. New England weather, he thought, and wondered why God had chosen to visit it upon his Virginia.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Walter Taylor asked, "Mr. Rhoodie, what do you call this rifle of yours? Is it a Rhoodie, too? Most inventors name their products for themselves, do they not?" "No, it's not a Rhoodie." The big stranger unslung the rifle, held it in both hands as gently as if it were a baby. "Give it its proper name, Major. It's an AK-47.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“President Davis said, "The 'free' factory worker in Manchester or Paris- yes, in Boston as well- is free only to starve. As Mr. Hammond from South Carolina put it so pungently in the chambers of the U.S. Senate a few years ago, every society rests upon a mudsill of brute labor, from which the edifice of civilization arises. We are but more open and honest about the nature of our mudsill than other nations, which gladly exploit a worker's labor but, when he can no longer provide it, cast him aside like a used sheet of foolscap.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lee wondered how Jefferson Davis had ever managed to inveigle him into accepting the Confederate Presidency. Even without counting the armed guards who surrounded the presidential residence on Shockoe Hill, he found himself a prisoner of his position. To do everything that needed doing, he should have been born triplets. The one of him available was not nearly enough; whenever he did anything, he felt guilty because he was neglecting something else.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But there is no such thing as possessing a little freedom," Lee mused. "Once one enjoys any whatsoever, he will seek it all.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Getting men to give officers the respect their rank deserved was a battle the army hadn’t won yet and wouldn’t anytime soon.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A low murmur came from his audience, more frightening in its way than the fury they had shown before. Fury didn’t last. Now Lincoln was making them think. Thought was slower than anger to flower into action, but it was a hardy perennial. It did not bloom and die.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He’d turned fifty-seven earlier in the year, and the past had a way of looking better and the present worse the older he got.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When a politician, which was what the president of the CSA had long since become, said he was personally in sympathy with something, Jackson had learned, he meant the opposite.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He realized, belatedly, that he had been less than diplomatic. That did not bother him, either: he was less than diplomatic.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No one argued with him, which was a pleasant novelty.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Like South Carolina, Utah is too large to be an insane asylum and too small to make a nation, and, unlike South Carolina, lacks other nearby states full of zanies to join her in her madness.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But, at the moment, the urge to write was not upon him. He shook his head and grimaced wryly. As a veteran newspaper man, he knew you wrote when you had to write, not when the Muse sprinkled fairy dust in your hair and tapped you with a magic wand.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So you’re one of the ones who still say ‘if there be,’ are you, Three-Card? I know the fancy grammarians like it better, but ‘if there are’ has always been good enough for me.” “I’m an old man.” Jesperson ran a pudgy finger along the gray walrus mustache he wore. “The things the modern generation does to the English language are a shame and a disgrace, nothing less.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it. Its glory is all moonshine.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Custer paused and sent Tom a quizzical look. “‘Scoops’? What’s a scoop?” “A Mormon. Heard it the other day,” his brother answered. After removing his hat, Tom mimed removing the top of his skull in the same way and scooping out a large portion of its contents. “Have to have most of your brain missing to buy what they’re selling, don’t you think?” “Mm, you’re likely right.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Mormons habitually dissembled about their plural marriages.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I see that this photograph shows me you have been imperfectly truthful here,” he told them, having been too well brought up to call a woman a liar to her face.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So this is the famous George Cannon of whom you telegraphed me, is it? He doesn’t look so much like a wild-eyed fanatic as some of the ones we snared before.” “No, sir,” Custer agreed: close enough for his superiors to hear him, he made a point of agreeing with them. “But without their coldhearted, coolheaded comrades egging them on, the wild-eyed fanatics could not do so much damage.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He rode forward at the gallop, brave but stupid. A moment later, he was brave and stupid and dead.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Blaine hated the Confederate States because they were a rival, not because they were tyrants. Had they been exemplars of purest democracy, rivals they would have remained, and he would have hated them no less.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He knew what he imagined and what was real were not one and the same. Knowing it and coming to terms with it were not one and the same, either.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Then he laughed at himself. If Fort Benton counted for civilization, he’d been out in the wilderness too long.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, they are great ones for taking a high moral tone, the Confederate States,” Douglass said. “Taking a high moral tone costs them nothing. Living up to it is something else again.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“War was rapidly doing what war did—making ugly everything it touched.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You wouldn’t bring me fifty dollars. You’re too damn old and too damn uppity.” “I can’t help being old, and I am proud to be uppity,” Douglass said.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every so often, though, the passing years up and ambushed him. They had more skill at it than any Yankees. One day, they would shoot him down from ambush, too.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What’s the war news?” “They’re killing people,” Sam said, and let it go at that.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why do we have such a pack of confounded dunderheads running this country?” “My theory used to be that we get the government we deserve,” Sam said. “Bad as we are, though, I don’t think we’re that bad. Right now, I’m taking a long look at the notion that God hates us.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some, the word means for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and with the product of his labor. With others, the same word means for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. The fullness of time, I am convinced, will prove to the world which is the true definition of the word, and my earnest hope remains that the United States of America show yet lead the way in the proving.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The worst revolutionaries today are those reactionaries who do not see and will not admit that there is any need for change.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An army that was winning had little backbiting. When things went wrong, everyone was at pains to prove the misfortune could not possibly have been his fault.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Apart from the Volunteer companies, a lot of men in San Francisco carried guns for self-protection—not least, for protection from other men carrying guns.”
Harry Turtledove (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source