Kil’n People

Quotes

1. Oh, there’s no high quite like getting the focused attention of powerful enemies. Nothing is better guaranteed to make you feel important in the world, which may be why conspiracy theories are so popular among frustrated underachievers.

   p. 400

2. 

   Fortunately, there is a famous inverse relation between fanaticism and competence.

   p. 64

3. 

   None of these problems resolved by the prescriptions of shamans and priests. Not by patronizing mystics or condescending monks.

   Technology. That’s what made things better! In fits and starts—and often horribly abused along the way—that’s where we found answers that were consistent, dependable, uncapricious. Answers that applied to lord and vassal alike. Answers that improved life across the board and never went away.

   p. 467

4. 

   Indignation is a drug that burns long and hot.

   p. 389

5. 

   The potentiality is evident to me now!

   Then what holds them back? Lack of faith? Divine judgment?

   No. Those old excuses won’t suffice. They never did. For where is the logic in basing salvation on a creator’s capricious whim or craving for praise? Or on prayer-incantations that vary from culture to culture? That’s not consistent or scientific. It’s not how the rest of nature works.

   p. 466

6. 

   And so the fighting retreat continues. Each time science advances, a new bastion forms…a new line, defining some remnant territory to be kept forever holy, mystical, and vague. Safe from profane hands. Until the next scientific advance, that is.

   p. 252

7. 

   Doing some thing you’re good at—what else can make you feel more genuinely human?

   p. 186

8. 

   Did you arrogantly expect that the entire universe was waiting upon man to arrive?

   p. 516

9. 

   “A hero is someone who gets the job done, Albert,” Clara once said. “Bravely when necessary. Courage is an admirable last resort, for when intelligence fails.”

   p. 389

10. 

    Secrets are like snowflakes, nowadays—rare and hard to keep for very long.

    p. 393

11. 

    Moralists can always justify going outside the law when it suits their sense of righteous timing.

    p. 176

12. 

    Technology keeps changing and the cams keep getting smaller. Only fools count on their secrets staying safe forever.

    p. 335

13. 

    A single figure could be seen pacing just outside the big encampment, picketing the picketers! SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS IS AN ADDICTIVE DISEASE, GET A LIFE! chided the placard…

    Some people—most people—have way too much time on their hands.

    p. 178

14. 

    Yes, evil thrives on secrecy.

    p. 191

15. 

    “Each of us remains convinced that our own subjective viewpoint is more urgent than anyone else’s—indeed, even more valid than the objective matrix that underlies so-called reality. After all, the subjective view is a grand theater. To be hero of an ongoing drama. It’s why ideologies and bigotries survive against all evidence or logic.

    “Subjective obstinacy had advantages, Morris, when we were busy evolving into nature’s champion egotists. It led to human mastery over the planet…and to our species nearly wiping itself out.”

    p. 318

16. 

    Inspired by these tiny sculptures, a few hyperfeminist mystics deduced a delightfully satisfying ideological fantasy—that an Earth-Mother religion preceded every other spiritual system, all over the planet. This Neolithic creed obviously worshipped a goddess of fecundity and maternal kindliness! Till gentle Gaia was toppled by violent bands of macho Jehovah-Zeus-Shiva followers, spurred by an abrupt wave of vile new technologies—metallurgy, agriculture, and literacy—that arrived with concurrent and destabilizing suddenness, shaking the tranquil old ways, toppling the pastoral mother goddess. It follows that every crime and catastrophe of recorded history stems from that upheaval.

    p. 287

17. 

    Another notion occurred to me as I stood contemplating my next move—a piece of advice Clara once offered:

    “When in doubt, try not to think like the dumb hero of some movied.”

    Charging into danger was one of those overused cinematic clichés, religiously adhered to by eight generations of brain-dead producers and directors. Another went: A hero must always assume that the authorities are evil, or useless, or bound to misunderstand. It helps keep the plot rolling if your protagonist never thinks of calling for help.

    p. 388

18. 

    True brilliance has a well-known positive correlation with decency, much of the time—a fact the rest of us rely on, more than we ever know. The real world doesn’t roil with as many crazed artists, psychotic generals, dyspeptic writers, maniacal statesmen, insatiable tycoons, or mad scientists as you see in dramas.

    Still, the exceptions give genius its public image as a mixed blessing—vivid, dramatic, somewhat crazy, and more than a little dangerous. It helps promote the romantic notion, popular among borderline types, that you must be outrageous to be gifted. Insufferable to be remembered. Arrogant to be taken seriously.

    p. 351

19. 

    If humanity has one majestic talent, it’s an almost infinite capacity to get used to the Next Big Thing…then take it for granted.

    p. 50

20. 

    Ah well. Heaven is a state of mind. I knew that now.

    p. 566

21. 

    Globalization never ended human cultural diversity, but it did transform ethnicity into another hobby. Another way for people to find value in themselves, when only the genuinely talented can get authentic jobs.

    p. 199

22. 

    He claims to have reasons. And yet, don’t all fanatics?

    p. 289

23. 

    It’s an austere, terrifying sensation. A reminder of something we all suppress most of the time, because it hurts so much.

    The stark loneliness of individuality.

    The essential alienness of others.

    And of the universe itself.

    p. 444

24. 

    Well, organic imagination doesn’t have to make sense, I recalled. Nor must paranoia be reasonable. It’s a beast that barks at nothing…till the day it’s right.

    p. 169

25. 

    It’s hard to feel completely hopeless during that special moment when you first catch sight of dawn.

    p. 480

26. 

    I threw the other garment over my head and let its black drapery flow over my arms, down past my waist. From the outside, I now looked like some shrouded creature from those dark days, half a century ago, when a third of the countries on Earth forced women to veil their faces and forms under shapeless tents of muslin and gauze.

    p. 333

27. 

    Yet where were answers to the truly deep questions?

    Religion promised those, though always in vague terms, while retreating from one line in the sand to the next. Don’t look past this boundary, they told Galileo, then Hutton, Darwin, Von Neumann, and Crick, always retreating with great dignity before the latest scientific advance, then drawing the next holy perimeter at the shadowy rim of knowledge.

    p. 482

28. 

    Evolution doesn’t happen without pain or loss. A lot of fish died, in order for a few to stand. The price may be worthwhile…

    p. 469

29. 

    Your idea of progress doesn’t sound like mine.

    p. 248

30. 

    The variety of inventive ideas—and ideologies—that people can come up with never ceases to amaze me, especially when they’re stoked by the ultimate drug, self-righteousness.

    p. 131

31. 

    In that case, I wondered, why do it at all?

    Rationalizations. People are talented at coming up with reasons to keep doing stupid things.

    p. 452

32. 

    Anyway, hurt feelings aren’t my concern, just facts. The crux is that civilization falls without accountability. What people do with it is their own concern.

    p. 82

33. 

    My old friend Pal had a philosophy: “When you lack understanding, or subtlety, you can still get your argument across with a monkey wrench.”

    p. 493

That’s all the quotes.

33 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more