Gregory Benford

Archeology is mostly a process of making associations between objects, and every discovery opens up possible resonances with things we already have. Sometimes, simply wandering through a museum or a site can open your eyes.

“So he looks like a potential Mr. Right?”

“No, just Mr. Right Now.”

The ship of theory could set sail on tides of mathematical grandeur and hope alone, but only data could fill its sails.

To believe anything so far-fetched, I’d have to see a solid calculation.

The desire to find something could provoke what she called “wantum mechanics,” fishing a result out of nothing but noise.

Engineers never liked the unexplained, whereas physicists lived for it.

Information wants to be free—remember that old saw? Some truth to it, only it’s backwards. This isn’t an information economy—we’re drowning in that—it’s an attention economy. That’s what everybody’s vying for.

When in enough doubt, let your subconscious work on the problem.

Indeed, she had tried to follow books and films about science, but they featured rugged, style-conscious folk who transacted their work in ornate bars, atmospheric dens thickly mired in a high-contrast noir underworld future where bizarre ornamentation passed for any sense of newness. She had never known anybody who could design an experiment or do a calculation on table napkins, sipping hip drinks while guitar riffs wailed in the smoky background, but in movies and TV this was standard, apparently to make matters more interesting to a weary public with the attention span of a commercial. Scientists were either aggressively hip, often clad in tight leather, or else pitiful, hopeless nerds, obsessional neurotics nobody would trust for a moment with the discoveries they had, quite implausibly, ushered into the world while anxiously trying to get laid.

The problem with the unknown was its lack of road signs.

Maybe is not a theory, you know, it is merely maybe.

She was grateful for something more than smooth, meaningless phrases. Better, the man had not reverted to the hedged-in, minimize-possible-damage style. And the first of all the commandments shall be: Cover Thy Ass.