David Brin

Quotes

1. 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

2. 

   Yes, evil thrives on secrecy.

   p. 191

3. 

   “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

4. 

   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

5. 

   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

6. 

   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

7. 

   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

8. 

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

   p. 566

9. 

   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

10. 

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

    p. 289

11. 

    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

12. 

    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