# Quote — Charles Sheffield, The Compleat McAndrew

> We got the way we are, Jeanie, because life on Earth is one long fight for limited resources. Our bloody-mindedness all started out as food battles, three billion years ago.

- Author: [Charles Sheffield](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-sheffield.md)
- Book: [The Compleat McAndrew](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-sheffield/the-compleat-mcandrew.md)
- Page: 125
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Sheffield#The_Compleat_McAndrew_(2000)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-sheffield/the-compleat-mcandrew/we-got-the

## More from this book

> As usual he looked tired, but that was normal. Geniuses worked harder than anyone else, not less hard.

p. 68 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-sheffield/the-compleat-mcandrew/as-usual-he-looked.md)

> The mills of bureaucracy may or may not grind fine, but they certainly grind exceeding slow.

p. 240 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-sheffield/the-compleat-mcandrew/the-mills-of-bureaucracy.md)

> The first space colonies had been conceived as utopias, planned by Earth idealists who wouldn’t learn from history. New frontiers may attract visionaries, but more than that they attract oddities. Anyone who is more than three sigma away from the norm, in any direction, seems to finish out there on the frontier. No surprise in that. If a person can’t fit, for whatever reason, he’ll move away from the main group of humanity. They’ll push him, and he’ll want to go.

p. 69 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-sheffield/the-compleat-mcandrew/the-first-space.md)