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. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Iain Banks

306 quotes

“So,” he said to the monk, “you are of an Order which also despises the Great Infernal Wizard.” “Indeed, your gracious Majesty,” the monk said, looking down modestly at the carpet. His voice sounded respectful. “Our Belief—perhaps not so dissimilar from your own, more venerable and more widely followed creed, is that God is a Mad Scientist and we His experimental subjects, doomed forever to run the Maze of Life through apparently random and unjust punishments for meaningless and paltry rewards and no discernible good reason save His evil pleasure.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you have this sort of power, this responsibility, you can’t choose not to have it when the decisions become tough. You can’t afford to prevaricate or delegate; you have to be engaged. You can’t stay neutral; you can say you’re neutral, and try to act as though you are, but that neutrality will always help one side more than the other; that’s just the way power works...the leverage it exerts.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Details matter, though, don’t you think?” he said. “Sometimes what appear to be utterly inconsequential actions have the most enormous results. Chance makes the casual momentous. It is the fulcrum upon which the levers of action rest.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Allow me to attenuate my portentousness for you.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think,” she said carefully, “that perhaps too many people want things to be simple when they are not and cannot be. Encouraging that desire is seductive and rewarding, but also dangerous.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Choice,” he said heavily. A small smile disturbed his face. “We all think we have so much of that, don’t we?”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Probably end up as one of those sordid cult leaders,” Zefla said after a while as they plodded into a bare area of the forest where a fire had left thousands of tree trunks standing upright and bare, black posts already surrounded by slender young trees forcing their way towards the sky around them. “You know, pedalling some weird concoction of re-tread gibberish and living in a palace while their followers sleep shifts and work the streets and give you this big flatline smile when you tell them where to stuff their tracts.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is there anything I can do? Just tell me. What can you do? Destroy things. All I can do is destroy things. It’s the only thing I’m any good at. Would you like me to destroy something? I want you to destroy everything! she screamed. Every fucking thing. All the evil men and compliant women, all the armies and companies and cults and faiths and orders and every stupid fucker in them! All of them! EVERYTHING!”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hope could be more painful than despair.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not wide asleep; fast awake!”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The King liked happy endings. You couldn’t blame the ancients for coming up with unhappy conclusions so often—they each spent all their single short life waiting either for oblivion or some absurd after-death torture—but that didn’t mean you had to stick faithfully to their paralyzed paradigms and ruin a good story with a depressing dénouement.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is all she says true?” Asura whispered. “Ah,” Pieter said, smiling. “Now, that is a question. Let’s say it is all based on truth, but the facts are open to different interpretations from the one she supplies.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She seems very sincere,” Asura told Pieter. “A word with oddly positive connotations,” Peter said, nodding. “In my experience those who are most sincere are also the most morally suspect, as well as being incapable of producing or appreciating wit.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What happens happens,” continued the Resiler, “and cannot be made to unhappen. We are the equations; we cannot deny the algebra of the universe or the result it brings us. Die peacefully or in hysterics, with grace or with despair; it matters not. Prepare or ignore; it matters not. Very little matters very much and almost nothing matters greatly.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Gadfium found these meetings exasperating; they were supposed to keep people up to date with developments and help facilitate actions which might be of use in the current emergency, but so far all they ever seemed to do was pander to some of the attendees’ feelings of self-importance and produce vast amounts of talk that substituted for deeds rather than leading to them.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Want to bet on it?” “Thank you, no. I believe gambling to be a pastime for the weak-minded.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The first time he saw somebody else he felt a mixture of emotions; fear, joy, expectation and a kind of disappointment that this wilderness was not his alone.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faith is the eye that sees nothing and rejoices in it.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Itz a very strainje feelin wakin up alive when u wer fooly expectin 2 b ded.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was a truism that all civilisations were basically neurotic until they made contact with everybody else and found their place within the ever-changing meta-civilisation of other beings, because, until then, during the stage when they honestly believed they might be entirely alone in existence, all solo societies were possessed of both an inflated sense of their own importance and a kind of existential terror at the sheer scale and apparent emptiness of the universe.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Being spoon-fed rosy-hued misinformation by the authorities was no more than people had come to expect—and preemptively discount. They only got suspicious when presented with what looked like the plain unvarnished truth.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People would swallow anything, just anything at all. Apparently some people found this dismaying. He thought it was a gift, the most wonderful opportunity to take advantage of the weak-minded.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The idea of faith interested him, even fascinated him, not as an intellectual idea, not as a concept or some abstract theoretical framework, but as a way of controlling people, as a way of understanding and so manipulating them. As a flaw, in the end, as something which was wrong with others that was not wrong with him.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They had faith and so would do things that were plainly not in their own immediate (or, often, long-term) best interests, because they just believed what they had been told.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the old days he had once wondered how many of the Cessorian high command, his old bosses, really believed in the Truth. He strongly suspected that the higher you went, the greater grew the proportion of those who didn’t really believe at all. They were in it for the power, the glory, the control and the glamour.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Muddle, confusion, stupidity, insane waste, pointless pain, misery and mass death—all the usual stuff of war, affecting him as it might affect anybody else, without any necessary moral reason, without any justice and even without any vindictiveness, just through the ghastly, banal working out of physics, chemistry, biochemistry, orbital mechanics and the shared nature of sentient beings existing and contending.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But did that mean that the urge to live was the result of some sort of illusion? Was the reality, in fact, that nothing mattered and people were fools to think that anything did? Were the choices either despair, the rejection of reason for some idiot faith, or a sort of defensive solipsism?”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As military fuck-ups went it was a many-faceted gem, a work of genius, a grapeshot, multi-stage, cluster-warhead, fractal-munition regenerative-weapon-system of a fuck-up.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sheer wastefulness of it all distressed him. He was older and wiser now and more used to the way that things really worked being more important than the way they appeared to (unless you were talking about public perception, of course, when it was the other way around).”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whether the Dweller List existed or not, everybody appeared to be acting as though it did, and that was all that mattered. It was a bit like money; all about trust, about faith. The value lay in what people believed, not in anything intrinsic.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any theory which causes solipsism to seem just as likely an explanation for the phenomena it seeks to describe ought to be held in the utmost suspicion.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Which was more likely: what appeared to be the case, or this all being a lie, a set-up, a vast and incomprehensible joke? Discuss.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was some thing almost sublimely elegant, Sal thought, about how perfect a waste of time, people, resources and hard work the whole project had been.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was one of those people who got to the top of an organisation through luck, connections, the indulgence of superiors and that sort of carelessness towards others that the easily impressed termed ruthlessness and those of a less gullible nature called sociopathy. But sometimes, just through his sheer unthinking brusqueness and inability to think through the consequences of a remark, he said what everybody else was only thinking. A comic poet working in obscene doggerel.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Apparently I am what is known as an Unreliable Narrator, though of course if you believe everything you’re told you deserve whatever you get.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lying here, during all this time after my own small fall, it has become my conviction that things mean pretty much what we want them to mean. We’ll pluck significance from the least consequential happenstance if it suits us and happily ignore the most flagrantly obvious symmetry between separate aspects of our lives if it threatens some cherished prejudice or cosily comforting belief; we are blindest to precisely whatever might be most illuminating.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I only tell them that because that’s what they like to hear, what they want to hear. That’s one of the lessons I’ve learned, isn’t it? You can go a long way just telling people what they want to hear. Of course, you got to be careful, and you got to choose the right people, but still, know that I mean?”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I mean, if you like feeling like an asset to your local community or something then fucking yahoo for you but don’t pretend you aren’t being exploited. People talk a lot about loyalty and being true to your roots and suchlike but that’s just bollocks, isn’t it? That’s one of the ways they make you do things that aren’t in your own best interest. Loyalty’s a mug’s game.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Madame d’Ortolan was, she liked to think, of elegant middle age, though to the casual observer this might imply that she expected to live to be about one hundred and twenty.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We live in an infinity of infinities, and we reshape our lives with every passing thought and each unconscious action, threading an ever-changing course through the myriad possibilities of existence. I lie here and ponder the events and decisions that led me to this point, the precise sequence of thoughts and actions that ended – for now – with me having nothing more constructive or urgent to do than think about those very eventualities.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of the wisest things anybody ever said to me was that if all you ever care about is money, money is all that will ever care for you.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beyond the beginning, nothing. At the beginning, a torrent of universes in a single timeless blink that is the mother and father of all explosions and is the opposite of an explosion, destroying nothing – destroying nothing but Nothing – but purely creating; snapping into existence the first semblance of order and chaos and the very idea of time, all at once.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Scotland is wet and dreary. Don’t let anybody tell you different. Even the hills are mostly just big mounds, not proper mountains like the Alps or the Rockies. People will tell you it’s all romantic and rugged but I’ve yet to see the evidence. Even when it’s nice it’s covered in a cloud of these bastard little insects called midges so you have to stay inside anyway. Plus it’s full of Scots. Case rested.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a matter of fact I did flirt with Socialism, in my youth.” “That’s when you were at university, was it?” He smiled. “Yes. University. But then I saw how much more comfortable life could be as one of the exploiters rather than one of the exploited. Plus I decided that if the proles were so stupid as to let themselves be exploited, who was I to stand in their way?”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was being sarcastic.” “I know. I was seeing your sarcasm and raising you deadpan literalness.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any argument or point of view that makes solipsism look no less likely may be discounted.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We had to assume that solipsism was nonsense because otherwise everything else around us was nonsense and irrelevant, and the result of a kind of self-inflicted deceit.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whenever one was struck by a previously unlikely-seeming idea that had come to appear plausible or even sensible, one ought to apply that test: was it inherently any more likely than solipsism? If solipsism seemed to make just as much sense, then the idea could be dismissed.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now, our tutor pointed out that there was a weakness in the hard-line or extreme solipsist’s position which came down to the question why, if they were all that existed, they bothered to deceive themselves so? Why did it appear to the solipsistic entity that there was an external reality in the first place, and, more to the point, why this one specifically? Why did the solipsist appear to be constrained in any way by that supposedly physically non-existent and therefore utterly pliable reality?”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s even more important to prosecute police who’ve broken the law than it is to prosecute anybody else, because otherwise nobody trusts the police.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source