Charles Sheffield

“D’you know what homeostasis is?”

“I used to, before I rotted my brain with politics.”

I’d make a case for saying anything that propagates itself in an intentional way qualifies to be thought of as alive.

It is not clear to me whether the insouciance of youth will be the doom of humanity or its salvation. I prefer to think the latter, but I have my doubts.

The limits we assign to Nature sometimes define our own lack of imagination.

Engineers are dangerous because they’re obsessed by facts and you can’t divert them or buy them off.

Data are not the same as information. Before you can get the answers you want, you have to ask the right question.

Right decision or wrong decision, it was a leader’s job to make it.

The same thing happens to every President. People tell a chief executive what they think he wants to hear. Rosy economic reports, high popularity figures, promising international changes, you name it. There’s a competition to be the first with good news. Anyone who tells bad news tends to get weeded out—even if all the real news is bad.

It is one of the unfortunate aspects of the legal profession that excess carries no penalty. There is never, for a lawyer, such a thing as too much.

If you tried really hard, you could take that as a compliment.

Forrest Singer, it always seemed to Saul, spoke as though the two of them were equals. Saul possibly held the slightly inferior position in the doctor’s eyes. Saul was the President of the United States, true; but Forrest Singer was an M.D.

Decisions based on incomplete information are one thing, a fact of political life. Decisions made with no information are another.