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Michael Swanwick

115 quotes

“They were not aware of the madness that lurked within their own minds.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now here is a treasure, Averroës Commentaries on Aristotle in a tolerable translation from the Arabic by Gerard of Cremona.” He lasciviously stroked the red leather boards, knowing well how his pupil ached for the chance to pore through it. “A liar’s gloss on a liar’s lies. Surely this is a rare criminal.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The hearsay of hearsay is not admissible as scholarship.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faust had no delusions of Heavenly aid. An involved and benevolent deity would have helped him long years ago when, young, he had yearned for knowledge as achingly as now and with far fewer stains on his soul.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He stood unmoving, wondering at his own abrupt and incomprehensible inability to act. He did not fear damnation. Nor did he give a fig for the common opinion of Mankind. There was nothing to stop him but fear alone—fear that his reasoning was wrong.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is the price you must pay for knowledge: You must understand and acknowledge its consequences.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Surely,” he cried, “this is not inevitable. Surely humanity could take the knowledge you offer and use it to ennoble itself. Surely they could apply it wisely and without folly.” “They could,” Mephistopheles said dryly. “But will they?”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now why on Earth would you tell him a thing like that?” “Because it’s true.” Sbrulius laughed. “That, dear Faust, is the single worst argument you could have raised. Many things are true. Few are proper. Fewer still are desirable.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Out of doors on a moonless night?” Mette sneered. “Only fools, footpads, and astrologers stray where there is no light.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have no need to expose myself to your flummery,” Mette said with dignity. “I believe in order that I may know. I do not know in order to believe.” “I marvel at your spite. Of what possible benefit can this willful ignorance be to you?”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(Information is information, Faust. Knowledge is knowledge. I make no distinction between the high and the low.)”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(All human beings have their price, and quite often it is surprisingly small. The trick consists of knowing exactly what that price is, when they themselves do not.)”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So it was that the Catherines poured water and spooned gruel, while the Clares prayed for the intercession of the saints. The Catherines changed sheets. The Clares practiced mortification of the flesh. The Catherines employed antibiotics. The Clares made a public display of a kneecap of their patron saint. It was soon widely know to which hospital one went to get well, and to which one went to die.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our records must be scrupulous, whether they show what we want them to show or not.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Margarete saw, and disapproved, and understood. It was perfectly natural that Youth, being given a new and revolutionary truth, should embrace it too eagerly, should defend it too loudly, should proclaim it in the extremest terms and without regard for the sensibilities of others. Natural, too, that Age, vested as it was in things as they had always been, should reject the truth as unsettling and dangerous. In the ace of such strong emotions, the only sane thing to do therefore was to embrace the truth circumspectly, to hide one’s new allegiance from one’s elders.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was so much going on, and so little he cared to know about!”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The law,” Hoess suggested, “might not be entirely unhelpful here.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Good men are dying at this very moment to protect you, your factories, your possessions, and all civilization.” “Good men are dying every moment,” Gretchen replied coldly, “somewhere. Since they did not ask my leave to do so, I feel no particular obligation toward them.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Still, it was no easy thing to flirt in German.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let me explain to you,” the Horned One said, “the nature of history.” “What?” “The first thing you need to know is that history happens almost exclusively in the dark...Here is your second lesson: History is that which cannot be prevented...Here is your third and final lesson: History is simply life with all the bits any sane person might care to experience left out.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(There are three stages to a battle: First you’re bored. Then you’re terrified. Then you’re dead. Each is necessary, and they must all come in the proper order.)”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Paid off? Do you mean bribery?” “That is, umm, not an entirely pleasant word for it.” Dreschler’s doughy face took on a pained expression. “It is more in the nature of an advance payment to ensure the labor force will be satisfied with the negotiated wage schedules.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faust wallowed heavily over on his side, presenting a pitiable face to Wagner. “Never fall in love,” he said. “She will take lovers, and some of them will be more experienced and capable than you. I tell you this as a friend—there are dishes once tasted, a woman is loath to do without.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What the common man calls Evil, he once told me, is nothing more than the fear of one’s own potential.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Urban life was thus founded upon the principle of deliberately confounding those who were not a part of it. Civilization was a strategy of exclusion.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That is the true measure of love, you see, the evil one will stoop to for its sake...”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was not possible for her to rejoin the unthinking world, becoming as she had been before, sleepily and smugly ignorant of consequences. There were thoughts that once thought, could not be unthought.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This was human glory—a sad and exhaust-darkened memorial for good citizens to ignore and drunks to piss upon on their way home from the brothels. Here was the omega-point of all ambition.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was not actually drunk, but emotion made him feel as if he were. Sorrow, loss, anger—these were as good as a bottle of the very worst gin.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He had for many years thought of Christ as a rival in greatness. Now he realized they were both brothers in misery. Their enemies were identical: the howling mob, the fearful, the inferior, the baying hounds of conventional morality.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It pained him to think how naive he had once been.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everything was dying, yet death did not suffice. Life had hidden resources. In a thousand ways it was concentrating strength, hoarding its energies in seed, chrysalis, and nectar, preparing for the warrior sweep out of exile that would undo the defeat of winter. Spring was implicit.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was accustomed to questioning an essentially impassive universe. The physical world might be maddeningly close-lipped about its secrets, but it didn’t lie, and it never actively tried to deceive you.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Common sense has very little to do with physics.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And she was off, leaping like a salmon from idea to idea. Hers was the kind of fast and playful intellect that enjoyed tossing a stone into the pond of received wisdom, just to see the frogs jump.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We did it the way we did it because according to the records, that’s the way we did it. The rules against paradox bind us as tightly as they do you.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everybody dies. So much of growing up consists of coming to grips with this fact.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She had learned at an early age that it was not how often you were wrong that counted in science, but how often you were right. One startling hit covered a multitude of bad guesses.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But the way she saw it, you only had so much organization in your life. You had to choose: Invest it in your research, or fritter it away on housework.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You have to spell things out for the press—you can’t rely on them to know even the simplest things.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It really is a pity. Esme was so full of curiosity and enthusiasm when she was a child. She’d make a great biologist. But it was her misfortune to be born wealthy. She had dreams. But her parents had too much money to allow that.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The authority of superior knowledge was different in kind from the authority of assumed power. Still, he felt a little awkward assuming it.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Okay, so we broke the rules. That’s good! There are no more rules—they’re broken. Anything is possible now. We’ll find a solution. There has to be a solution. There always is.” “Not in my experience.” They were, he realized, standing on opposite sides of the great divide that separates those who deal with scientific fact and those who deal with the consequences of human actions. Which is to say, those who believe in a rational universe and those who know that, given the existence of human beings, there is no such thing. “You and I belong to entirely different universes, did you know that?”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man thinks with his dick,” Jimmy said, embarrassed. “That’s why his friends have to look out for him.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s inspired lunacy,” Leyster agreed. Chuck looked crestfallen. “Right up there with continental drift, or the notion that birds might be descended from dinosaurs.” Chuck brightened. “But it’s also right up there with Eric Van Danniken and Lamarckian genetics. Until we’ve tested it out, it’s just a nifty hypothesis, no more.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She was one of those people who discredited their own ideas by the force with which they argued them.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your system works fine in theory. But things are different in the real world.” ”I’m going to move to Theory some day,” Chuck said. “Everything works there.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That’s impossible.” “Only to small minds,” Gertrude said.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was a terrible blessing she’d been given, to see herself the way everybody else did.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He’s just an ambitious young beta male with delusion of alphahood. He wants power and double rations, is all. This whole thing stinks of primate politics.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source