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
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
James Nicoll
75 quotes
“At some point when I wasn't paying attention, comedic genocide just stopped working for me. This is a shame because so much fantasy and SF depends on genocide as positive plot element. This trifling oddity of taste must have robbed me of hours of morally equivocal entertainment.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of T. Kingfisher's Nine Goblins, 2013
“A common issue with SF settings is that causally disconnected civilizations nevertheless are close enough in technological development that conflict is possible, rather than it being a matter of laser cannons against a thin film of single celled organisms.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Engineers and certified pilots may be expensive but talented young men with a teenager's grasp of risk are surprisingly affordable.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I didn't skip the smut. The author went to the trouble of writing it, after all. I did not feel to make notes for possible application later on but I also never wondered if the author was a virgin raised in an abandoned hentai warehouse, which is always a possibility for modern pornographers and erotica writers.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: LiveJournal post (review of 'The Russians Came Knocking' by K.B. Spangler), 2014)
“seems from all reports to have been a very pleasant fellow but he did have one huge blind spot, which is that he was as sexist as a giant ball of sexists wrapped in a dense layer of yet more sexists.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (review of 'The Lights Outside the Windows' by James White (collected in "Deadly Litter"), 2014
“Alas, time and head injuries are stealing all my memories.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Women of Wonder, anthology edited by Pamela Sargent, 2015
“Atomic war is bad but you know what's even worse? Having had enough atomic wars that you can rank them in terms of horribleness.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Voodoo Planet: Solar Queen, book 3 by Andre Norton, 2015
“The one job that machines cannot do is be a cruel plutocrat. That's why humans are still needed.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald, 2015
“Thoughtful consideration has led me to decide that romance, involving as it does the highly complex interaction of human neurochemisty{sic} with cultural and technological factors, is hard SF. Very hard SF because romance is especially difficult to mentally simulate accurately, not easy-peasy like rocket science. Romance as hard SF may seem counterintuitive, but it's the counterintuitive results of modeling that are often the most interesting outcomes.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: review of Don't Fear the Reaper, by Zen Cho, 2016
“I wonder if every near-future SF series in which the US is not a brutal theocratic police state ruled by doctrinaire bigoted oligarchs and their boot-licking enablers became obsolete on ? Won't it be fun to find out together?”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: review of Brute Force, by K. B. Spangler, 2016
“, who if I recall correctly is a veteran of the Korean conflict, does mention logistical details more often than I expect in MilSF. Not the fun kind of logistics, involving the production of a million zillion Squamoid Hypermissiles, but the mundane sort, like who gets to dig the latrines. Latrines are not romantic, but nobody wants a battle called off because the men all have dysentery and are too busy shitting blood to fight.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: review of The Mercenary by Jerry Pournelle, 2016
“Niven made a name for himself as a author, which is to say, someone whose SF provides enough technical detail that the reader can be certain that various mechanisms and events couldn't work the way the author has them working.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: review of All the Myriad Ways by Larry Niven, 2015
“It's a sad thing that the march of time and evolution of mores can rob one of the ability to laugh at simple domestic abuse.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: review of The Flying Sorcerers by David Gerrold and Larry Niven, 2016
“It's very difficult to convey how alien and horrifying accounts of how American health care works sound to a Canadian. Seriously, if I didn’t know they were real — if, for example, I didn't know an American reviewer who died because she had to choose between paying her mortgage or having a doctor investigate her incapacitating chest pains — it would seem like something from a particularly silly and Garbageman novel. About the only thing about the US that seems even less believable is the collective enthusiasm for frequent mass murders.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: review of The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley, 2016
“could extrapolate stories, entire worlds, from s.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: review of Close to Critical, by Hal Clement, 2017
“Creating stars in laboratories on the very planets you inhabit turns out to be a bad idea.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Almost-Classics: SF Concepts and Settings That Deserve Better Execution on , January 29, 2018
“Although no credible evidence exists that the speed of light can be exceeded, writers are willing to embrace the possibility that light might be outpaced somehow. Never underestimate the persuasive power of somehow.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Talkin’ ‘Bout My G-G-Generation (Ships) on , March 13, 2018
“Just as people in zombie apocalypses seem never to have seen a zombie apocalypse movie, so people in novels about the pioneering days of time travel never seem to have read novels on the subject.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor, 2018
“I also do not recommend shopping with Cordelia Naismith—but I would watch that reality show.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Six Characters with Whom You Should Never Ever Go Camping" on , August 20, 2018
“There are no diplomatic efforts that cannot be successfully undermined by a few bigots in the field.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: World States and Mega Empires in SF, on , November 12, 2018
“I like to think the old traditions live on, along with almost all of the children.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of "The Man Who Bridged the Mist", by Kij Johnson, November 30, 2018
“The [item] that was stolen [in the 1975 novel The Whenabouts of Burr] was the physical artifact the American Constitution, which has tremendous historical and symbolic significance, and not the legal and political framework also known as the American Constitution, which is a quaint relic of no relevance to the modern world.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of The Whenabouts of Burr by Michael Kurland, June 14, 2020
“This I (still) believe: Fire is not necessarily your friend. Neither are dogs. Things with lit fuses should not be held onto. Beware the savage croquet ball. If it is -30 out, put on a coat before you leave the house. Just because the snow keeps you from seeing other objects the objects do not cease to exist. Clotheslines are the enemy of the bicyclist. If you don't remember how you got on the ground or where the blood came from, don't get up right away. Gym teachers think it's funny to commit assault with a baseball so don't day-dream during PE even if they have you so far in the outfield there are DEW line posts on either side of you. All guns are loaded. So are many bows. Trebuchets are for outside use only...”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Facebook post (2014)
“The sharp side of the knife goes away from you. Pure reason does not trump brute force but suprisingly few people know what hot peppers look like when the teacher asks if you have enough to share with everyone. Never take the lid of a pressure cooker 'to see if it's done yet'. Even if you are careful with the picric acid that won't matter if you are careless with other items next to it. Move *away* from mysterious burglar alarms. Do not append 'you moron' to exposition directed at people who have just broken into your building. 'We need to talk' is overwhelmingly unlikely to precede good news. A rough brick wall may be used to sort socks or as a backdrop for sock-art (The Neglected Art). A silent cat is Up to Something. Lungs are unsuited for many possible atmospheres, including that of London, and anything with a high content of industrial cleaners. Youth will not save you from Newton's Laws. Or Darwin's.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Facebook post (2014)
“There's a rule I used to call The Niven Rule but which I just now have decided to call the Rusting Bridges rule. It came to me after reading Niven's “All The Bridges Rusting.” In this story, humans have by the early 21st century explored the Solar System and sent not just one but two crewed ships to Alpha Centauri ... despite which the characters moan endlessly about the dire state of the space program. “Eyes of Amber” would be another example of the Rusting Bridges [Rule]: No matter how much the space program you actually have has achieved, whether it's first contact with aliens or trips to nearby stars, it can never have achieved as much as the space programs you can imagine would have achieved in its place, given that imaginary programs aren't limited by issues of politics, funding, or engineering.”
James Nicoll (born 1961) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of “Eyes of Amber”, by Joan D. Vinge (as anthologized in New Women of Wonder, edited by Pamela Sargent, 2015